The Winding Way
by Reign of Rayne
Summary: It turns out that just finding a way to live is harder than observation leads Bucky to believe. But, even though his mind may be working against him, the battle to build himself a semblance of a life in the wake of SHIELD's collapse is not one that Bucky plans to lose.
1. Chapter 1

_Hello everyone! I know it's been a while, but I'm back to post my story for the Cap RBB. I had the pleasure of working with the wonderful artist Tunte (tuntematonkorppi on Tumblr), who made some awesome art that was the launching point for this story. Also, I would like to give a thank-you to the mods of this RBB - everything was run so smoothly, and even though this is only the second bang I've ever participated in, it has given me another wholly positive experience._

 _This story (with the art) will also be posted on AO3. My username there is Reign_of_Rayne._

 _Now, without further ado, the story. Enjoy!_

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1

Stupid. This was stupid. _He_ was stupid. Just a mugging, right? Just a, "Hand over your groceries and wallet and no one gets hurt," right?

Wrong, according to the 9-millimeter hole in his side. God, he was so stupid.

Bucky blew out a shaky breath and leaned his head back against the cool brick of the alley wall. He was lucky to have gotten away from that mess of a scene before anyone responded to the gunshots, but the blood now seeping through his fingers was going to catch someone's attention if he tried to make his way back to his current base. He had to do something about his wounds and find a change of clothes before he could go anywhere public without taking the risk of someone noticing and calling the police or worse.

After making sure that no one had followed him into the alley, Bucky checked the extent of the damage. From what he could tell, the first bullet had punched into his right side and stayed in the wound. The mugger had shot Bucky through a dumpster, which had probably done enough to slow the bullet down that Bucky didn't have to deal with a through-and-through in such a dangerous section of his body.

Still, he needed that bullet out, and a dirty alley wasn't the place he wanted to do it even with his serum-enhanced system. And the last thing he wanted to do was leave more blood that someone could use to track him down.

The other two bullets had hit his right shoulder and scraped his left knee, making the entire situation far more irritating than it had any right to be.

He didn't have very long before his tissue would begin to knit itself back together, sealing the bullets inside, so Bucky moved quickly. After a few minutes of searching, he saw an apartment on the third floor of an aging building with its lights off. It was late in the day—about seven o'clock—but not late enough to justify going to bed early. Bucky's instincts told him that the room was empty. And if it wasn't, he'd adapt.

The old fire escape was tricky, especially with the injury to his shoulder. He could deal with the pain—he'd endured worse—but the muscles in that area weren't functioning properly, throwing off his balance and grip. By the time he made it to the window, his flesh hand was shaking.

No time to be delicate. Bucky forced open the window, hearing and seeing the old wood splinter under the strain. He ducked inside, landing softly on the old carpet and examining his surroundings.

No lights at all, and no signs of life that he could hear. Well, except for the tiny creature with glowing eyes staring at him from the kitchen doorway.

It meowed.

"Quiet," Bucky told the cat.

It meowed again—quietly. Bucky took that as his signal and crept past the creature, which for all its mottled fluffiness did a remarkable job of staying out of his way. Bucky's quick search of the kitchen yielded what he was looking for, and he took the bottle of vodka with him to the bathroom. The medicine cabinet behind the mirror was poorly stocked, so Bucky grabbed the tweezers, dental floss, and gauze. He briefly examined the small bottles of medicine; according to the prescriptions tacked onto the mirror, this person had recently been in some kind of accident.

That would explain the gauze.

He went to the bathtub and settled in, grinding his teeth together to stifle a groan of pain. Blood oozed out from between his fingers where he was pressing on the hole in his abdomen, reminding Bucky that he'd already left bloody handprints all over this apartment.

Later. He would deal with that later.

He stripped off his jacket and shirt, tossing them behind him in the tub. His shirt took some of the half-formed scabbing on both holes with it, leaving Bucky with more blood to deal with than before.

He opened up the vodka, waited one second for his head to empty, and then poured the alcohol over the hole in his abdomen. His nerves registered the burning agony immediately and Bucky's entire body tensed even though he tried to stop it. After a couple seconds he wrestled control from his muscles and forced himself to relax, shutting off the keening noise he hadn't realized he'd been making in the back of his throat.

He set the half-emptied bottle down and picked up the tweezers with the metal hand. After splashing them with more vodka in a bare-minimum effort to sterilize them, Bucky positioned them above the bullet hole. With the light above the shower acting as his only guide, Bucky inserted the tweezers into the wound and began digging for the bullet lodged somewhere in his extremely dense tissue.

The metal hand did not shake. The flesh hand formed a fist, the nails digging white crescents into the palm. His brain was no help, offering fragmented images of silver tables and white coats that only served to make the flesh hand shake harder.

His world was graying out at the edges, the colors bleeding into one another. Bucky forced air into his lungs.

The sensors on the metal hand picked up the tiniest vibration—the tweezers hitting the bullet.

Deep breath in, deep breath out. Repeat. Once more.

Bucky pushed the tweezers in deeper, forcing them around the bullet, shoving into already-damaged tissue until he could clamp them around the thing causing him so much pain. Bucky then pulled the bullet out, hearing the sucking noises it made as Bucky's body finally released the projectile. The bullet clinked against the tile floor where Bucky dropped it, the tweezers following a moment later. Bucky took a few seconds to just breathe, waiting for his body to catch up with his brain. The metal hand was slick with blood and glistened under the light, so Bucky wiped it off on his shirt. Then, once he could see in color again, he went back to cleaning the wound.

It was bad enough that it needed stitches, so Bucky pulled out the dental floss and then fished around in his jacket pocket to pull out the small container of emergency items he had begun carrying with him for first-aid. He pawed through the miscellaneous items until he found the tiny bag of needles. Selecting the smallest one he could reliably hold, Bucky threaded a bit of floss through it.

Another round of disinfecting and drying—an old voice in his head, distorted with time, _"you gotta be careful about things like this, Stevie, c'mon"_ —and then he was stitching. The needle pierced the lips of the wound with deceptive ease but Bucky could feel it every time. In and out, the wound pulling closed bit by bit as Bucky used the metal hand to suture and the flesh one to push the edges closer together. Despite his efforts to go quickly, he still ended up with blood coating his fingers when he was done.

Then he repeated the process on his shoulder, though the wound there had much less damage around it. The bullet had damaged a solid chunk of skin and more flesh underneath, but the bone had avoided the worst of the carnage.

He finished digging the bullet out and stitching up the wound, set his supplies down, and looked up.

The cat was in the doorway, staring at him with its big green eyes.

"Mrrt," it said.

"What?" Bucky replied, frowning at it.

" _Mrrrt_ ," it repeated, more insistently this time. Bucky glanced at the bloody mess around him and then back up at the cat.

"I'm going to clean up."

It began licking itself. Bucky swore at it in Russian for no other reason than to get the last word in and then treated the injury on his knee.

Once he had sufficient bandaging in place—courtesy of the gauze and a few other things he'd pilfered from the bathroom—Bucky moved all his things to the bathtub and began to clean the rest of the apartment. Fortunately, he had avoided dripping any blood onto the floor, but there were several places in the kitchen and bathroom where he had left bloody smears on the handles and drawers. He wiped those areas down with paper towels soaked in cold water while the cat trailed behind him. To be fair, this was probably the most interesting thing to happen to the dumb creature in years.

 _"/You are tiny and annoying/,"_ Bucky told it in Russian as he disposed of the paper towels. It yawned back.

Cleanup took ten minutes. There was nothing he could do about the window—he'd given most of his cash to the mugger (in what had proven to be a failed tactic for peace)—so he left what remained on the counter alongside a note.

 _Sorry for window. Had no other option. Thank you for things,_ it read.

He tossed the pen back to where he'd found in on the counter. The metal hand left no fingerprints, so once Bucky collected the rest of his things, he went back through the apartment in search of something he could wear that wasn't colored a suspicious crimson. The occupant of this place was large, larger than Bucky. He took a sweatshirt and slipped it on, trusting the baggy red fabric to hide any potential bloodstains. Then he climbed back out the window, shoved it closed as best he could, and made his way back to ground level.

This was not at all the way he had wanted to start his night. He'd been planning a nice walk home, some reading, maybe something else he'd surprise himself with. Not bullets and blood.

Bucky headed for the exit of the alley, only pausing when he got the prickly feeling that he was being watched.

He turned and looked back at the broken window.

The cat was perched on the other side of the glass, staring. Bucky mockingly saluted the creature for its ceaseless vigilance and then continued walking. Thanks to the accident earlier, he would have to go shopping again. Having given the last of his cash to the apartment occupant, Bucky headed for a more crowded area of town.

With a mission in mind, the crowds didn't bother him as much as they usually did and the pain of his injuries could be relegated to the very edge of his awareness. Bucky slipped in and out of streams of people, his hands working as quickly as his mind could identify targets. Within ten minutes and three blocks, Bucky had pick pocketed enough money to finance his groceries for the next few days on top of the supplies he was about to purchase.

He slipped out of the populated area, heading for a tucked-away section of street dominated more by small, run-down shops and corner markets than ritzy stores and restaurants. The shop Bucky ducked into didn't have everything he wanted, but it had enough. Bucky got his groceries and other items, paid and thanked the cashier, and went on his way. This time, trouble stayed away from him as he walked, but Bucky wasn't leaving anything to luck. He kept his eyes moving and his free hand near the blade hidden in his jacket.

He would have to move again; that mugging incident had been the third unusual event in this area since Bucky had moved in from his last haunt. Too many more and the wrong eyes could start looking his way.

His internal clock said it was sometime around eight o'clock when he made it back to his hideout. Tucked into the back of a building scheduled for demolition the next month, the small series of rooms was perfect for Bucky's temporary needs. Cut off from view, he had dragged in a sleeping bag, light, and small pile of books he'd planned on finishing before he had to move again—a plan that wasn't going to work anymore

His groceries—canned goods, mostly, but this time he'd gotten some relatively fresh fruit and vegetables—went into their proper places in the room that got the most cool air from outside. The bag went into a larger bag that contained all the rest of the bags. The basic medical supplies went by the books, to the left of the duffel bag that could fit all of Bucky's belongings in an emergency. Bucky himself went to the sleeping bag after removing his boots. Bending over proved to be a challenge, so in the end Bucky just toed the boots off, nearly falling when his balance shifted farther than he expected because of his wounds.

He paused for a moment when a loud blast of a car's horn cut through the wall, but after a moment it faded into the general hubbub of the city. Still, the interruption was a good reminder to sweep the building for other squatters. After fifteen minutes of thorough searching, he found no other signs of people inside.

Reassured, Bucky returned to his room, grabbed his current book, settled into his sleeping bag, turned on the small lamp at his side, and began to read in the comfortable pseudo-silence of his own space.

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 _ **Please review!**  
_


	2. Chapter 2

2

At six in the morning he woke up. He changed the dressings on the bullet wounds, wincing when dried blood stuck to the gauze. The process took about seven minutes, inefficient by normal standards, but he was working with subpar supplies. By six thirty he was out and roaming the streets, hands in pockets and baseball cap hiding his face from cameras.

The fresh air and human noise served to further wake him and to stimulate the parts of his brain that always seemed to drift away if he was alone for too long. With more funds procured from loose pockets, Bucky stepped into a small store to get new clothes. He only had space for two new outfits in his duffel, which worked fine since Bucky just had to replace the one that had gotten bloody and the other one that was looking rather threadbare at this point.

Nearly everything in the store was priced approximately 350 percent higher than it needed to be, but the cashier would probably remember someone grumbling darkly at every single price tag, so Bucky let it go. He settled on two unreasonably priced pairs of jeans, three pairs of reasonably priced socks, and two shirts that could have gone either way. Bucky put the clothes on the counter by the cashier, paid the unnecessarily large bill, and then left, the plastic bag gripped loosely in his left hand. He paid a brief visit to his base to drop off the purchases—and to change into the pants that didn't have a bloodstain on the both the left pocket and the left knee—and then he went out again. Restlessness had kept him moving the past few days; it was always like that for the first couple of weeks after a move. He had to map out the area, see it with his own eyes so he'd know routes and shortcuts in an emergency.

He'd already explored the general neighborhood, but for the moment he wasn't feeling the need to go farther than that—especially since those routes ran much higher risks of running into Steve.

In the year since Insight, he'd moved around a lot, only coming back to New York City when he was sure that it was the best option—and that Steve had stopped looking for him within the city limits. That had been…six, seven months ago now? It wasn't as if he didn't want to see Steve, though. He just wasn't ready yet. There were all kinds of things about that meeting that could go wrong, and Bucky had to plan and get ready for them before he felt comfortable enough to engage.

What did you even say to a guy you've tried to kill almost as often as save?

Nothing. At least for now.

Fortunately, there were a lot of places nearby he could go that would satisfy his need to be outdoors.

He settled on a small park near his place in Hell's Kitchen. A few kids were playing in the small playground, their caretakers chatting amicably on a bench nearby that was mounted on springs. Bucky got a hotdog from a vendor on the corner and settled on another bench under the shade of a maple tree. There wasn't enough ketchup or mustard on the hotdog, but it was still tasty. Certainly better than the canned stuff he had back at base.

"Someone catch it!"

Glancing to his left, Bucky saw a young man running after a dog, the leash trailing behind the small animal. Bucky put the last bit of hot dog into his mouth and swallowed. The dog was heading towards him; it would be more noticeable to do nothing than to help.

He was really starting to hate small, furry creatures.

The dog was small and fast but not very smart. Bucky let it run by and then scooped up the leash, giving a little when the dog pulled it so that the dumb thing wouldn't choke itself. Of course, idiot that he was, he'd used his right hand to grab the leash, and his wound gave a painful twinge. The young man caught up a moment later, but those couple of seconds gave Bucky enough time to suppress his reaction. The man had to bend over for several seconds, breathing hard, before he could straighten up and accept the leash.

"Thank you," he said. "I don't know what I would have done."

Bucky just nodded. He could see the other people looking out of the corner of his eye—even the kids—and so he knew he was going to have to cut this park visit short.

"You're welcome," Bucky said when it became clear that the man wanted more than just stony silence. "If you'll excuse me."

"Oh, right. Thanks again."

With the park a non-option, Bucky stuck to the streets and small plazas dotting the area. For lunch he ate at a sunny café. He picked up a newspaper afterwards and settled down on a bench to read—or pretend to. People-watching proved to be the more entertaining activity, and so Bucky passed the time observing the crowds flowing by. He was careful, though. After twenty minutes he moved several blocks, and then again, each time keeping his face hidden from any security cameras. He read the same article about some sports coach getting fired twenty-three times in three hours.

When the sun began to set, Bucky debated whether to eat out or back at the base. He had already eaten at restaurants twice today, and his muscles were getting twitchy with the constant exposure to too many stimuli. He would undoubtedly get a headache if he continued, and that would only be the beginning. Besides, he needed to check the conditions of his wounds.

Decision made, Bucky folded up the newspaper, stuck it in the nearest trashcan, and went on his way. He didn't have much to think about while he walked; his mind seemed content to focus on nothing, and Bucky wasn't inclined to force the issue. So he mused about the position of the moon in the sky and let his feet set the path.

He stopped outside of a comic book store. Something about the displays in the front pulled at him: action figures of the Avengers were stuck in strange poses in front of their respective comics. Bucky's gaze skipped over the non-Steve figures until he found the Captain America comics. He'd read a couple of them in the past few months. He wasn't sure why; the colorful images, implausible fight sequences, and cheesy one-liners didn't tell him anything about the real Steve. But he read them anyway, finding amusement in the ridiculous stories.

They had him in tights in a few of them. Like the suit Steve had worn when doing his tour as a dancing military mascot, when he was the perfect poster boy.

Bucky's right eye pulsed. Was that a memory from Before or After?

Either way, it was a memory. Steve in an obnoxiously colored _thing_ that barely counted as a uniform, posing proudly in a photo, patriotically-clad dancers lined up behind him.

Thinking about it brought a strange mix of feelings: amusement, resentment, dread. They were too vague to associate with any ideas in particular, but Bucky was sure that this wasn't the first time a memory had felt like that.

Another piece of the puzzle that was his life, then.

He went into the comic store just to kill time and satisfy the pull in his gut. The woman behind the counter barely registered his entry and only offered a bored, "Hello, welcome, feel free to buy stuff," as a greeting. Not that Bucky was complaining. He skipped past the glossy displays in the front, heading for the back shelves. He didn't want the new issues that covered the Avengers and SHIELD and Insight (though members of the last category was rare thanks to lacking information). He wanted the old stories, the ones that were equal parts heartwarming, dumb, and thought provoking.

He found a few in the very back and, since the cashier was clearly disinterested in the idea of customer service, Bucky settled in for a nice hour of reading. Sitting was a little awkward—at anything but a very specific angle, the wound in his stomach burned, and he had to hold the comics weirdly so he wouldn't pull on the hole in his shoulder—but he found a spot that worked and stayed there.

As he'd expected (and wanted), the comics had very little of substance. These weren't the famous runs; they were old, sure, but not old enough to be valuable. In a couple, the characterization was so bad that Bucky had to set them down before his reaction manifested as something the cashier could hear. In others, especially one that had the Howling Commandos, Bucky put them back for an entirely different reason.

Then he picked them up again. And, when he finally got up to leave, he took them to the register and bought them.

"Have a nice day," the young woman said.

"You too," Bucky replied, matching her bored tone exactly. It was unnecessary but satisfying.

He took the comics out again once he made it back to the base, setting up much as he had the previous night after he changed his bandages. His knee was mostly healed now, but the other two wounds needed more time before he could take out the stitches.

While he read, Bucky compared some of the events that seemed real with the memories floating around his brain. The majority of the things described in the comics—daring raids, incredible battles fought on improbable battlefields—didn't appear to have actually happened. But some things struck a familiar cord: a relief mission to a besieged battalion, a scouting mission in the mountains gone awry, a long trek through snowy, freezing terrain.

 _"I'm freezin' my fuckin' toes off."_

 _"Well, Dugan, unless you want me to hug your feet all the way to camp I suggest you shut your trap. We're all fucking freezing."_

 _"Ouch, Sarge."_

Of course, the corresponding scene in the comics didn't include the swearing. Bucky paged through the rest, watching Steve make improbable shield throws across entire pages and generally just defy the laws of physics while the Howlies laid down an excess of covering fire.

All in all, a pleasant way to finish his day. He put the comics he hadn't read by the books he had yet to read, while the rest went to the bottom of the duffel bag alongside his changes of clothes.

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 _ **Please review.  
**_


	3. Chapter 3

3

The following day, Bucky went to a nearby gym. He didn't necessarily need the workout—the serum in his veins kept his body at a baseline level of fitness, provided he maintained a certain amount of nutrition and exercise—but he did need to get clean, and working out was an acceptable excuse to use the facility's showers.

And he'd scouted this building, giving himself further reason to go inside. As far as he could tell, it was an honest business—an old one, too, without registration or cards or anything of the sort that could be used for tracking. Just walk in, talk with the guy that came up to meet you, get a few things sorted out, and then do your thing.

Exactly what Bucky wanted.

He had one pair of workout clothes (freshly cleaned at a nearby Laundromat) and wore them in with a hair band on his wrist for when he actually began to work out.

The biggest problem was, of course, the arm. Hard to explain away a gleaming prosthetic, and pretending as though it was normal in a place where he would most likely end up using it would draw more attention than trying to talk about it. So, to address the issue, Bucky had run some small tests throughout the past few weeks when the weather occasionally got too warm to wear a jacket. Since it was the middle of Spring, the weather was fluctuating enough that Bucky had plenty of opportunity.

So far, he had obtained the following results: small children were more likely to be fascinated than scared and asked, on average, ten (10) questions concerning its workings and one (1) about its history; teenagers were much the same, asking an average of six (6) questions regarding how it functioned and then three (3) about how he obtained it; young adults mirrored the teenagers save for one fewer question on average about its origins; older adults either ignored it or behaved in a similar way to young adults. In every case, merely calling the killing machine a prosthetic he received for a wartime injury sufficed as an explanation. As long as he limited its movement and did not display any of its more advanced functions, the cover would hold.

The man at the front desk lifted his head when Bucky walked in due to a bell linked to the door, which drew his attention away from the old TV flashing away on the wall.

"New here?" he asked gruffly.

Bucky nodded. The man looked him over—not in the critical way that Bucky was used to, but simply for the sake of observing. Then the man did an odd thing, something Bucky had not observed him doing with any of the other customers.

"Head on back," the man said. "Men's locker room's to the right of the boxing ring. Holler if you need anything; I'll come over 'n help."

Somewhat taken aback, Bucky nodded again. "Thank you," he said on his way past. The man just inclined his head, and that was when Bucky caught sight of the dog tags hanging around his neck. Understanding washed over Bucky and he walked a little faster, unsure how to deal with the emotions suddenly swirling around his mind—emotions brought on by memories and experiences he only half-recalled.

His workout had suddenly taken on a new purpose. Bucky dropped off his duffel (currently containing only a change of clothes and a few essentials) in a small locker in the locker room. There was only one entrance into the room, and the window was too small to permit entry, so the busted lock on the locker itself didn't concern him. He could monitor the entrance while he exercised.

There were three other people in the main room. Two were boxing—well, one was teaching the other, using special blocker mitts while the other had on regular gloves. The last person, a woman, was doing complicated stretches in her own corner. For a moment, as she stretched into a handstand, Bucky recognized those muscles, the curvature of her body, the color of her hair. His inner alarms blared and he tensed.

Then he blinked, and the woman was once more as unrecognizable as the man behind the counter. Bucky was just being paranoid—for a good reason. But he was being paranoid all the same.

He began to warm up, beginning with a light series of stretches before transitioning into poses that caused his muscles to tremble. The metal arm remained at his side, for all intents an inert, if impressive, accessory. The other patrons didn't even look at him besides their initial glances.

Not bad.

Bucky transitioned into more dynamic positions, stretching his body in ways that defied gravity. Even without eyes on him, Bucky found himself adjusting automatically to fit the standards that had been seared into his muscles, every second of hesitation a brand in his back. Still, the exercise was a good way to vent the tension that had been building in his body for the past couple of days. After ten minutes Bucky had to take a break lest he risk worsening his injuries.

There was a small stack of clean towels nearby. He took one and wiped off his face, mindful of which hand he used. The two boxers were chatting in the corner, one demonstrating moves against air while the other critiqued. The woman had shifted to a punching bag, and while her form needed work, she had clearly had training in the past. Bucky didn't watch for too long; he had too much experience with people's strange sixth sense about being stared at to risk her noticing his gaze.

Once his body felt balanced again, Bucky shifted to a body-weight workout: one-handed pushups, one-handed pull-ups, lunges, among many others. By the time he got to squats, the three others were on their way out. The woman left first, having finished her punching and subsequent cool-down. The other two quickly followed, and when they entered the locker room, Bucky found a good excuse to go in as well so he could make sure neither of them got too close to his locker. Once inside, he made a show of washing his face and adjusting the way his hair was pulled back while the two men showered. One was visibly uncomfortable about having Bucky in the room, but after some encouraging words from the other, he stripped and went to the showers.

Transgender, Bucky realized after catching the briefest glimpse of the surgery scars. Though the entire concept of transgender people was relatively new to him—Hydra didn't much care if their asset knew about gender theory—Bucky understood the gist of it.

Reservations about the two men allayed, Bucky left the locker room and went back to his workout. He was still sure to observe them as they left, though. And when he went back into the locker room to check on his gear, it was all still there.

The rest of his workout went smoothly. Bucky was most of the way through his cool-down poses when the man that had greeted him at the front walked into the main room.

"Not to pressure you, son," he said, "but I've got some questions if you don't mind me askin'."

Bucky slowly fell out of his one-handed handstand, rolling into a smooth crouch and then straightening. The delay gave him time to consider whether he should let the man ask his questions. There were plenty of reasons not to: his cover, for one. But this man had done Bucky a clear kindness, and that action deserved reciprocity—especially if Bucky wanted to come back to this place.

"Go ahead," Bucky said while grabbing his towel.

"Well, first I should introduce m'self," the man said. He stuck out his hand. "I'm Sammy Wilkes. Pleasure."

"The same," Bucky said, shaking with his right after draping the towel over his shoulder. "James Buchanan. Thank you for letting me use your gym."

"No need to be so formal, lad. This place has been around for people like you for years. Just a place to be for a while."

"I appreciate that."

"No need to pay," Sammy continued. "Though I certainly wouldn't mind if you could afford it."

Bucky ran through a quick estimate of the rate he was going through cash and how easily he could get more. He would have to tone down the pick pocketing or risk getting caught, but there were other ways to get cash—as long as he was careful.

"What's the charge?" Bucky asked. Seeing Sammy open his mouth, Bucky shook his head. "I can afford it. Just wasn't sure earlier."

Sammy nodded. "Right. Well, this ain't one o' them membership situations." He rubbed his chin, giving Bucky another one of his peculiar considering looks. "How about ten bucks for today, and you can come in whenever you like."

At this point, Bucky was inclined to give much more than that. But he could sneak the extra money in another time, maybe pitch in to get Sammy some new equipment. From the state of some of the punching bags, that certainly seemed desirable.

"Sounds fine." He would pay on his way out.

Bucky ran through the rest of his ending stretches. As he began to clean up the mat and other small weights he'd brought out, Sammy, who had been watching, cleared his throat.

"Did you serve?"

Bucky paused. That was a question he could answer honestly. "Yes." He made a point of glancing at his arm. "I…don't care to talk about it."

Sammy nodded. From his expression, Bucky judged that he wasn't the first person to have that desire. "'Course. You're always welcome here, though."

"Thank you."

Sammy tipped his hat and went back to the front desk. Bucky finished cleaning up and then went to the locker to shower. He had to be a little careful; cold water could lead to uncontrollable shaking and even flashbacks, so while he waited for the water to warm up, he stripped and found the small pile of towels big enough to use after showering.

Then he went under the water. It was warm, fortunately, and Bucky relaxed into it as much as he could. Then he set about cleaning himself. With the plates in the metal arm, he had to be wary of his hair getting caught in the fingers and forearm while he washed, so that took longer now. He was done within four minutes, though, and when he stepped out of the locker room dry, fully clothed, and clean, there was still no one else in the gym. From what Bucky had inferred of Sammy's business model, it ran more on the goodwill of the neighborhood than cold cash—even if one led to the other. The empty gym, then, didn't mean what it would for one of the more modern kinds of installations.

"You have a good day," Sammy said after Bucky put his money on the counter. Bucky nodded back.

"You too."

He was on his way out when he finally registered what the voices on the TV were saying.

"—attack has been going on for ten minutes now. Authorities are on the scene but it appears that the aggressors are attempting to flee. We cut to Anna Lee on the ground—"

Sammy sighed. He glanced at Bucky, seeing that he had stopped to watch as well. "Real fucked up, what they're doing," he said.

Bucky watched the helicopter footage follow a van careering around a corner. There were bodies left in the building. The cameras were deliberately avoiding them.

Sammy had fixed his eyes on the screen again, so Bucky made his exit. From what he had seen, this was a small-time attack. No need to worry about the Avengers flying around town. Even better, the place was over a mile away.

He paused for a minute outside the gym to stretch a little. His stitches pulled and Bucky winced, lowering his arms. He had at least one more day of relatively light activity until the stitches could be removed without risking the wound pulling open. Adjusting the strap of his gym back, Bucky started his trek back to base, keeping his eyes peeled for anyone or anything that seemed out of place.

In the end, there was someone out of place—in the wrong place, at the wrong time, to be precise. The scene unfolded slowly: the kid in the crosswalk, headphones in, phone in hand, the walk signal a flashing red hand with the number ten blinking to nine, to eight—

Around the corner, a van screeching, barreling down the street, cutting through the thin traffic. In the distance, sirens.

Screams. Everyone noticing the danger. Almost.

Bucky was the closest. Time slowed further. He watched the wheels of the van rotate, watched the entire machine bounce over potholes and cracks, watched it careen towards the boy who had no idea his death was coming.

Cameras: two. Traffic camera, low quality; chances of identification: low. Security camera in quaint shop across the street covering entrance. Quality: high. Chances of identification: high.

Cost of action: high.

Cost of inaction: higher.

 _"You ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?"_

He didn't need the rest of his memory to know his response.

But. The kid.

Cost of inaction: high.

Yeah, he'd gotten that the first time.

Bucky hefted his gym bag, got a feel for its weight, and threw it. The entire sequence took a total of two seconds, but even in that brief period, the tinted windshield of the van drew closer. It wasn't honking, just moving, disturbing a balance without sound.

200 feet. 150.

The hand blinked to six. People were shouting to get the boy's attention. They were failing. Bucky took one step. Another.

The hand blinked to five.

100 feet. The boy paused, glanced up. The van closed in, its grill bearing down. The boy screamed, panic seizing his muscles, condemning him to becoming a smear on the front bumper—until Bucky crashed into him, slamming the boy out of the way and sending him to the asphalt several yards to the side of the van's path. But Bucky had no time to get out of the way. His momentum hadn't carried him as far as he'd hoped; if he rolled, he risked putting himself under the wheels. He was already on the ground from diving. The van was nearly on top of him.

There was one emotion pulsing beneath his stifled adrenaline response.

Identified: anger.

Bucky had twisted in the air and now lay on his back, looking up. The front bumper passed inches from the tip of his nose.

Identified: rage.

The underside of the van was all he could see.

 _You motherfuckers just fucking ruined my fucking morning._

Bucky was aware of each of his subsequent actions: the breath, the movement of his left arm, the grip on something vital, the neural commands being sent to the arm so that the component was ripped out of the bottom of the vehicle.

All in the span of an instant. The resultant force caused Bucky to spin, getting his right foot run over by one of the van's back wheels. The van screeched as its wheels stopped turning or changing direction without the component that Bucky had left crushed on the street.

Another instant and Bucky was slowly rolling to his feet, all too aware of the stares leaving the van and coming his way.

He didn't care about the stares. He limped over to the kid, who was staring at Bucky with awe and fear mixed in his eyes.

"Are you injured?" Bucky asked. Visual examination indicated no major injury save for scraping on the hands. Bucky guessed that the boy would also have bruising from where Bucky's hands had collided with his abdomen.

"N-no," the boy stammered. "I'm okay. Tha—thank you. Sir."

Bucky nodded. He walked over to the shop—his foot was tender and would be sore the next day, but he couldn't detect any broken bones or other serious damage—and pulled his pack off the camera, careful to stay out of its field of view. The lens was cracked and so was part of the casing, but it was a small price to pay for relative anonymity.

He left before anyone with a cell phone got any funny ideas.

* * *

 _ **Please review.  
**_


	4. Chapter 4

4

He moved bases. It wasn't a major move; he didn't switch neighborhoods entirely. The latest event with the van hadn't been significant enough to warrant such an extreme response.

Besides, he was tired. He woke the following day—having spent the previous one changing locations—with a headache. Ice and anti-inflammatory medication had worked well enough for his foot, but his earlier actions had aggravated his stitches, meaning that Bucky had to leave them in for longer.

He forced down a breakfast of cold canned ravioli—this shoddy, crumbling apartment building barely had electricity and its heating was a joke. He found himself checking the seals around the window and the cracks in the walls. He didn't know why. He had no voluntary memory of ever performing such actions before.

This neighborhood was one that had been decimated in the alien attack years before. Reconstruction was taking time. Bucky was happy to have the block to himself. He would live with falling debris from the crumbling stonework if it meant peace. He simply had to be careful about entering and exiting lest someone was watching and got suspicious—though there were other squatters in these locations, so Bucky's presence wouldn't be entirely unexpected.

Unfortunately, he hadn't had time to scope this location out as well as he had his previous ones. There was a chance that he was on someone else's turf here, and so he kept his supplies hidden but ready to be moved at a moment's notice. In the meantime, he scouted out what he could while remaining out of sight and wandered around the safer, more populated streets.

After a few hours of walking around, Bucky silently cursed his way through lunch. There was a report on the television in the bar he was eating at about what he had done the previous day. Fortunately, no one had been fast enough to get good video. All that the report showed was a picture of him standing over the boy, his back to the camera and no view of his metal arm and a short clip of Bucky grabbing his gym bag and leaving. No shots of his face or the arm.

The anchors were commenting on a lot of things. Bucky caught "tragedy," "lucky," and "savior" all in the same sentence and decided that the report really had no new or dangerous information.

Still, he made himself smaller in his seat while he munched on his sandwich. And when the waitress came around on her next pass, all she found was a fifty on the table and an empty glass of apple juice.

Bucky kept off his feet more than normal that day. He stayed off the streets for the most part, and when he did go out he went in clothing that was much different than what he'd worn out of the gym. His right foot ached, but the pain wasn't getting worse so Bucky settled for more ice, more anti-inflammatories, and less walking. The apartment's bedroom had only one window and it was easy enough for Bucky to shift a chair out of sight.

Of course, he couldn't just sit down. He did a perimeter check. And then another, because his mind would not slow down. Only when he was satisfied did he return to the bedroom.

He pulled out a book, kicked his legs up onto the creaky footrest, and began to read.

* * *

"Didn't expect to see you back here so soon," Sammy said when Bucky walked in the front. "People drop in 'n out."

Bucky shrugged. "Nowhere else to go."

"I'll take that as a compliment. Got two other people here today. Enjoy yourself."

Bucky nodded. As he was entering the locker room he finally processed the fact that the TV in the front had been switched off. He paused with the door clicking shut behind him, turning that fact over in his mind. Sammy had to have seen the report. He knew Bucky's clothes, would have recognized the bag if nothing else.

Was it a courtesy? A sign?

He didn't know how to read that kind of thing anymore.

When he emerged from the locker room in his gym clothes—one of his three current outfits, the same one he had worn two days ago—the other two people were by the weights. One was doing bench press with the other spotting him, opposite of what they had been when Bucky first entered.

Bucky went back to his corner and began to run through the same routine he had the first time. There was one more TV in the gym that Bucky hadn't paid attention to before. The picture was a bit grainy, the screen was cracked in one corner, and the sound didn't work, but it was something to focus his eyes on.

There was an attack going on in California, some kind of assault on a military base by people within their own ranks. Civilian forces couldn't get inside. The news was speculating about possible threats or demands, which was stupid. If an organization already had the time and supplies to plant their forces inside those of another, they could get everything they wanted without needing a ransom.

HYDRA. This was a HYDRA attack. They wanted the base's arsenal.

The reporter on site—or several blocks away from on site—was talking. Bucky read her lips while he did lunges.

"We're getting word now that the Avengers are en route. No telling what their plan of attack is, Diane, but everyone is hoping to have this situation resolved as quickly as possible."

He looked away. They were so confident in the Avengers. Yes, a military base was in the process of being taken over by hostile forces _that had_ _infiltrated the military_ , but everyone thought that the Avengers would stamp out the problem and have it over and done with.

The camera suddenly panned up and Bucky got a glimpse of a quinjet shooting overhead. His vision split and the ghost-memory of kicking a man into the rotors surfaced long enough to throw Bucky off balance. He stayed in that position—fallen out of his lunge, right hand braced against the floor—for several seconds while he got his breathing under control. Judging by the conversation between the other two people in the room, they hadn't noticed anything amiss.

Bucky straightened. The moment of weakness reminded him that he couldn't let his mind or his body be idle. He would finish his workout, shower, and then scope out his next potential base location in the event his current one was compromised. Better than forcing himself to sit in a silent, abandoned space, alone with his memories.

The TV switched to a different camera angle while Bucky was doing his final set of single-handed handstand push-ups. Even though he was upside down and had sweat dripping into one eye, he could still watch the camera zooming in on the action below. There was the metal man at the front. Off to one side, the bowman. And near the front, throwing himself into trouble, was Steven Grant Reckless. He threw his shield and Bucky watched the unmistakable object sail through the air and then off the screen. Steve gave chase while the camera focused on Iron Man.

Bucky rolled out of his handstand, coming out on his feet. The news had switched back to an interview with the woman he really didn't care about. Bucky ignored the rest of the broadcast and continued his workout. As he was pausing to drink water, another person walked in. Bucky spared the man a glance to assess him: short stature, short hair, worn gym bag, and eyes that skipped right over Bucky. This guy didn't care about Bucky any more than Bucky cared about him.

Perfect. Bucky crumpled the paper cup and threw it into the bin next to the jug before returning to finish his workout.

The man was out of the locker room by the time Bucky entered, and the other two people were still working out—or just talking. Bucky slipped into the shower and then got dressed, having to pause and rub out his hair with a towel to stop it from dripping. The two talkers walked in right as Bucky finished buttoning his jeans. Bucky didn't have his shirt on yet—his metal arm and the scars criss-crossing his skin were plainly visible—so he let the metal plates on his arm lock while he started to pull on his shirt one-handed. He'd worn a button-up for just this reason.

Even his fast reaction wasn't enough to stop the men from seeing his scars. Bucky knew better than to turn his back—the scars ran so deep there that the flesh was knotted and uneven under his skin.

"Shit," the one in front said. His friend elbowed him. "Sorry."

"It's fine," Bucky said. He shrugged on the shirt and started to button it. The unspoken rule not to speak resumed its effect and the two men left him alone. Bucky shouldered his bag and left, nodding to Sammy on his way out after he left a few bills on the counter.

"See ya!" Sammy called as Bucky left. Bucky lifted his right hand in farewell and exited onto the street.

He'd spent a long time in the beginning scouting out potential places to establish a base. The ones that got only cursory checks had gone to the bottom of the list. Since Bucky was now at the bottom of his list, he had to look those locations over again to see if they were worth living in.

His gym bag earned him some dirty looks when he had to go through more crowded areas, but for the most part people treated him as they treated the trees planted in some of the sidewalks: nonexistent until someone ran into him.

The first two of his last three locations didn't work. One had too much traffic nearby and the other had become occupied in the weeks since Bucky had last checked up on it. Neither option appeared as though it would open up any time soon, leaving Bucky with only one place left. If this one wasn't viable, he'd have to spend the rest of his evening searching. At least now he didn't have to worry about his wounds; he'd removed the stitches in his abdomen last night. There was scarring, but it was minor. There would have been none if he'd had better medical equipment at the time, but there was nothing he could do about that now.

Bucky stopped a block away from his last option, pausing to buy an ice-cream cone from a vendor on the corner. The guy was still selling even though the weather was hovering around forty—a testament to human stubbornness, maybe. The chocolate ice cream was good either way.

He then slipped behind a tour group rounding the corner, shifting his posture and stride to blend in.

"And here you can see structures that were stopped partway through construction, a halt caused by the Chitauri invasion. Over there, in that brick building, you can see through the fencing, a Chitauri vehicle crashed down and nearly killed five civilians having lunch. They all escaped, thanks to the heroic efforts of the Avengers and police forces."

Bucky wanted to snort. He doubted the Avengers had been in this section of the city; the Tower was over two miles away, where the aliens had been concentrated and the Asgardian Loki stopped. This was an attempt to get awe-inspired money for the tourism company.

Bucky followed the group until they passed close to a parking structure that still had scaffolding up one side. Then he split off, climbing the chain-link fence with ease and dropping down to the ground on the other side on silent feet. Bucky took a second to adjust the strap of his gym bag over his shoulder before he strolled into the structure.

It was a mess. Partially-poured concrete was crumbling little by little and graffiti took up most of the outer surfaces at ground level—but a quick check of the overall structure showed that it was sturdy. Just the small bits and pieces were breaking.

This would work, but Bucky wasn't finished. He looked over the whole place. Wind and weather had worn it down in some spots, and water damage had cracked other places. But the lower levels were serviceable, and somewhat clean. A broom and a couple of days would render the place slightly more comfortable than livable.

Bucky stretched some thin wires over the main entrance. If anyone came in while he was gone, he'd know.

He shouldered his bag once more and headed out.

* * *

There were people in his apartment. Or there had been. Bucky saw the broken strings lying on the floor just inside his door and he had to remind himself to breath.

Identified: adrenalin spike.

Bucky considered the advantages of just being homeless. He would have no base to be broken into and no fixed location to be tracked down. Of course, he would also be exposed to prying eyes, and whatever conditions he found himself in would undoubtedly wear his clothing and belongings beyond saving in short order.

Not worth it, then.

The intruders had not been kind. Bucky picked up the couple of books he'd had sitting out and then stepped over the broken furniture with them tucked under one arm. His footfalls crunched over shattered glass.

Identified: anger.

 _Assholes_.

They hadn't touched his go-bag, which was still under the floorboards like it always was. Bucky pulled the trusty duffel out, put the books inside, and then grabbed some of the preserved food he'd had in the cupboards before throwing that in as well. He was heading towards the door when he heard the footsteps.

"Shit," Bucky said, already turning towards the back exit. The door busted open a second later and Bucky heard the unmistakable sound of a safety being switched off.

"Move one more step and I'll pull the trigger."

Young voice. Male. Bucky turned and had his suspicions confirmed: the person behind the trigger of the old pistol was a man probably in his early twenties.

"I said, don't move," the man repeated when Bucky took a step forward. Bucky stopped and lifted his arms, his bag's strap digging uncomfortably into his neck with the movement.

"I'm not gonna hurt you," Bucky said.

"No shit," the guy said. "The hell are you doing on my turf?"

"Your turf?"

"What, you a dumbass or somethin'? Yeah, _my_ turf. Who sent you? Aaron? Mari? Philo?"

"I don't know any of those names."

"Put your bag down," the man said, gesturing with his gun. Bucky did so slowly, his eyes flicking between the man, his gun, and his four friends standing behind him.

"Were you the ones who came in here earlier?" Bucky asked.

"Yeah. What of it?"

"Why did you break everything?" Bucky made sure to keep his voice level and calm. He wanted to avoid another bullet hole in his body if at all possible.

"To teach you a lesson."

Bucky chose not to point out that none of the furniture had been his. He hadn't even had time to decorate the place with a plant, much less a couch. The man inclined his head and his buddies entered, quickly surrounding Bucky. Four of the five—including Mr. Nice Guy—had pistols. The last guy had a knife.

Bucky took a deep breath. The familiar calm was stealing over him; his body was anticipating the violence. The metal arm quietly whirred as its components shifted into place.

He lifted his gaze, matching Mr. Nice Guy's. "Why did you come back?"

Mr. Nice Guy grinned. "Saw you come back."

They must have been in one of the buildings Bucky didn't check. He resisted the urge to scowl; he'd been careless in his approach.

"What's your name?" Mr. Nice Guy asked. Bucky spared a glance at the other men. They were nervous, their fingers resting on the triggers. It wouldn't take much to get them to reflex-fire. None of them looked overly experienced or appeared to have proper training.

All the better.

"What's yours?" Bucky said, returning his eyes to the leader's.

"I asked first."

Bucky nodded slowly. "You did."

Time slowed. Bucky whipped his bag at the gunman to his front left and then ducked. Gunmen Two and Three—back left and back right, respectively—fired over his head. Knife Guy was hit by Two's bullet and went down with a scream. Bucky launched himself forward out of his crouch and tackled the leader to the ground. The leader grunted in pain and tried to pry Bucky's grip off his arm but failed. Bucky twisted on the ground and put the leader's body between him and the remaining two gunmen while he stood.

Gunman One—who had taken Bucky's densely-packed bag to the head—was still down. Two and Three weren't looking confident.

"Shoot him, you assholes!" the leader shouted, trying to writhe in Bucky's grip.

"You're in the way!"

Bucky had three seconds before Three got over his nervousness. His gaze was much colder than Two's; perhaps he'd killed before. Even Knife Guy's moans weren't appearing to bother him. Bucky wasted no time.

He tensed his core and then shoved the leader at Three. They both went down and Two fired a shot. The bullet ricocheted off Bucky's metal hand and Two froze, confusion writing itself all over his face.

"What—"

Bucky grabbed him by the throat and hurled him to the ground. Two stayed down, visibly stunned by the impact. Bucky then took Two's gun and crushed it with the metal hand before turning and throwing the ruined weapon at Three, who had stood up just in time to get brained by the metal. Three fell hard, nearly knocking over Mr. Nice Guy, who had dropped his gun on the way down. The weapon was now underneath Three.

"W-what the hell _are_ you?" Mr. Nice Guy stammered.

"Leave," Bucky said. "Take your men with you."

He didn't move. Bucky narrowed his eyes. " _Now_."

The ones that could still move stumbled into motion. Bucky watched them drag the writhing man that had been shot—and bled all over the floor—out the door and down the street. No doubt they would eventually be back with more weapons and more people.

Bucky picked up his bag again. He gave the apartment a last, cursory check. It had been bad before Bucky arrived. Now it was terrible.

"Ублюдки," Bucky muttered as he kicked aside a chair leg on his way out.

 _Bastards_.

While he walked to the new base, Bucky considered a few things. The biggest issue was the obvious violence—sooner or later, someone was going to notice and talk about it to the wrong people. Those guys had seen him deflect a bullet. Word like that got around sooner or later. Bucky's best plan would be to leave the city, lay low for a while, and then come back when he was sure nothing had come of the incident.

Yet his feet carried him towards the parking garage, not the train station. He could no more leave this place than he could detach his arm.

That was an unfair comparison. The thing—the person—holding him here was nothing like the piece of metal grafted onto his body. But in both cases Bucky had very little choice; one was forced on him by others, the other by himself.

He had to know. What, he wasn't sure. But the need to know drove him to stay.

The other problems were basic: money, food, clothing, shelter. He had money for the moment, shelter for another. His clothes would last as long as he avoided conflict. He'd already had to throw out the green sweatshirt he'd bought just a week ago thanks to that mugger shooting him. Blood didn't show that easy on the dark fabric, but bullet holes were hard to hide. And he could procure money as he needed it.

His mind cycled again. It did that, sometimes; Bucky had to keep thinking, had to keep his mind working. Had to have a task.

He was here for Steve. That was undeniable. He was pulled to Steve.

 _I knew him._

God, he was so stupid.

What was he even supposed to say? His last idea—"Hey, I know I was your best friend, I known I tried to murder you, but let's be friends again"—didn't seem appropriate. And he was hardly going to copy what he'd seen in his past few months in the city. Everyone was so…blunt. Steve was special. He deserved something better than a half-assed attempt at hello.

But Bucky had no idea what to do. No idea where to start.

Maybe he could copy Sammy; he was nice enough. Start simple, with the basics.

 _Hello. It's nice to see you again, Steve._

What was he, a robot? Bucky shook his head. He could think about that more later. For now, he could work on cleaning up his new base. His dusty, crumbling, old wreck of a base that didn't even have decent Wi-Fi.

He missed his first setup. That hotel scheduled for demolition had been perfect right up until the crews came in.

Bucky landed on the other side of the fence, the force of the impact shooting up to his knees. He straightened and stared at the hulking gray structure before him.

Yeah, he missed that hotel.

* * *

 _ **Please review.  
**_


	5. Chapter 5

5

Maybe he was being a little harsh on the new base. Sure, it smelled funny in the morning. Sure, every noise echoed for an unreasonably long amount of time. Sure, it had almost no personality. But it was _his_ , and after attacking it with a shoplifted broom (and wasn't _that_ a story) it was almost okay. An electric lamp served as his main source of light—daylight didn't penetrate several feet of concrete very well—but his night vision was good enough to compensate.

There were two ways in and out. The most obvious was down the massive ramp, so Bucky had set up his camp on the backside of that ramp to stop someone from spotting him immediately. The other way was through a maintenance corridor that led into the sewers. This building had been meant to be part of a much larger complex, but the Chitauri had stalled those plans, leaving Bucky with a nice route to the rest of the city in a place he couldn't be easily followed.

So yeah, Bucky wasn't complaining. Besides, if he adjusted his sleeping bag just so against the wall, he actually had a pretty comfortable seat on which to read.

He turned the last page of his newest comic book, his eyes lingering on a panel of Steve blocking three bullets with his shield while a fourth slipped through. The dynamic image and the echo-memory of someone he couldn't identify shouting _"STEVE!"_ was enough to pull Bucky out of his head and get him to reconnect with the world. He shifted a little, marking his spot in the comic book and setting it aside. His mental clock told him it was around two in the afternoon.

Bucky shifted a bit and reached for his backpack. Tugging it over, he set the comic book inside with the others and then stood. He lifted his arms over his head and stretched, feeling his right shoulder pop. His left one clicked and whirred while the inner components dealt with the extreme position. Then Bucky let his hands drop. He meandered over to his food supply and crouched down, picking through the cans and protein bars and water bottle before choosing the last of his fruit—a very bruised pair of bananas—and a can of beans.

"Oh boy, beans," Bucky muttered. This was his third meal of the day; with his metabolism, had to have at least four, and he didn't have the storage space to carry all the food he needed at one time.

Which meant, of course, more shopping. But that could wait. Bucky had already gone shopping earlier that day, so he was set for the next two days provided that he didn't have to change location again. That left him with the option of staying in or heading out.

The weather answered his question for him. Right when Bucky was beginning his trip up the ramp to the ground floor, the entire structure shook as a rumble of thunder rolled through the air. Bucky paused halfway up the ramp, waiting to see whether the storm would break or not, one foot poised in front of the other, eyes turned up to the ceiling several yards above his head.

Another rumble. Then, with much less drama, the light pattering of rain. The soft noise soon turned harsher as the rain came down harder and harder, and then the thunder was roaring on top of it and Bucky was heading back down, counting his breaths and grabbing the comic book again with shaking hands.

In the tiny halo of light provided by his lamp, he made himself keep reading and reading the brightly-colored panels describing Steve. Bucky directed his mind to Steve and away from the thunderstorm outside.

Comics-Steve's uniform was woefully inadequate for protection purposes—just fabric and a helmet—but comics-Steve didn't care. He threw himself into dangerous situations anyway and didn't wait for backup, even if comics-Bucky was only minutes away.

Comics-Bucky was almost as bad. Spandex—bright blue, bright red—was his outfit of choice, even though he was supposed to be some kind of stealth operative.

Never mind the fact that comics-Bucky was young. Very young. Bucky wasn't even sure he'd known Steve at that age.

His head pulsed in tandem with a clap of thunder and Bucky set the comic down and massaged his temple. There was water dripping down into the lower level and Bucky focused on that, isolating those noises from the rest of the storm while he closed his eyes and shifted into a cross-legged pose. This was an exercise he'd practiced nearly every day in his first few weeks, an exercise left over from HYDRA and—and maybe before that, too. He focused on one stimuli and let the rest fade into the background, all the while taking long, deep breaths.

In, out.

In, hold, out. He timed his breathing with the drips echoing in the vast space. Inhale through the nose, exhale through the mouth, and repeat.

Calm within, storm without.

Bucky opened his eyes some time later. His internal clock told him that around an hour had passed, and his senses told him that the minutes had carried away the worst of the storm. Thunder still rumbled far in the distance, but it was a pale echo of what had shaken the parking structure in the beginning.

After a few more breaths, Bucky unfolded himself and stood. He paused when he got to his feet, the feeling that he should be in pain after sitting in the same position for so long registering in the part of his brain that tended to wander. Bucky shook that feeling aside. He was fine. He did some stretches to put that feeling to rest and then checked out the ways the water had worked its way into the lower level. He then did a perimeter check, shrugging on a sweatshirt and heading out into the miserable rain.

The plastic still secured to the chain-link fence ringing the property flapped in the wind. Between that, the rain, and the sounds of the city, Bucky was hard-pressed to hear anything out of place, so he put his focus on his other senses, especially the sixth sense he had cultivated over the course of his life that told him when something was off.

After his third lap, the urge in Bucky's brain was satisfied and he went back inside, settling himself in his previous spot after spreading his sweatshirt and pants out to dry and changing into a cleaner set. He reached for the comic book and then paused. He was wary of triggering a flashback, and the comic book carried a risk of doing just that. His headache earlier had been a warning, and that thunderstorm had already frayed his nerves.

Instead of reading, Bucky arranged his coat and dry sweatshirt so that he could lie down on them with some level of comfort. His backpack, always within reach, yielded the three-dimensional puzzle Bucky had picked up at some point on his travels. It wasn't a hard puzzle; the two bits of metal were looped together and intertwined so that, at first glance, it seemed as though they could not be pulled apart. Bucky had long since figured out the trick to the thing, but it was comforting to have something to do with his hands.

The rest of his mind wandered. Clearly, his current situation was not a permanent arrangement. Even with him changing locations every few weeks, he was going to get caught eventually. Whether that was by HYDRA's hand or Steve's, Bucky didn't know. If it was the former, he wasn't going to let himself be taken again. His brain was still glitching sometimes, losing parts of seconds and skipping over words. He couldn't do it all again. He wouldn't. And the latter—

Well. He didn't know what he'd do then. It was almost comical, the way he stayed here. Steve was an itch that Bucky couldn't stop himself from scratching. Bucky had to know where Steve was, had to know that Steve was okay or with people that would make sure he was okay. Even if Bucky were to go farther away, he knew he'd be doing the same thing: checking the news, reading the papers, scouring the Internet for any signs that Steve Rogers wasn't anything except healthy.

Bucky pulled the puzzle pieces apart, idly wondering if Steve thought the same about him. Clearly Steve was worried about him. Those first few months after Insight when Steve had been all but obsessive were clear indicators. Even now, Bucky caught wind of posts on social media about spotting Captain America (never Steve Rogers, always Captain America) in odd places: diners, parks, bars, and even museums. A few of those posts had come with pictures. A few of those few had been pictures that showed Steve's face.

He'd never looked happy. Always pensive, or blank, or tired.

Was that because of Bucky?

The metal pieces of the puzzle clicked as Bucky fit them back together.

There was no way to know that for sure unless he went up and asked, and there was no way in hell he was going to do that. He wasn't ready and he didn't know what Steve would do. This Steve was different than the one in Bucky's memories and in the comics. The Winter Soldier knew this Steve well enough as an enemy, but Bucky Barnes was having a harder time. Would they still be friends, or would Steve have drifted away? Kind of hard to find that common ground again after murder and fucking HYDRA.

Maybe he could use that as an opener. _"Hey Steve, doesn't HYDRA suck?"_

Steve probably wouldn't find that funny. Or maybe he would.

Bucky needed to think of something better to say. Something that wasn't forced or stupid.

He was gonna need some more time for that.

* * *

He was nursing a cup of lavender tea at a local café that night when a group of teenagers came bustling in. They were all upwards of seventeen or eighteen, laughing and jostling each other on their way to the front. Bucky watched them over the pages of his book. In this small space, they were the loudest and most vibrant addition to the place in almost an hour. Outside, in contrast to the light blue wallpaper of the café, the clouds from the earlier storm were drifting away, and as the sun floated down over the horizon, its watery rays painted the clouds in streaks of fiery red.

The teenagers clustered around a table designed for half their number. They chatted about nothing but did so with alacrity. They pulled out their phones and looked up ways to prove the points they made as they argued about the pros and cons of the Hoover Dam.

Bucky decided that he was not going to try to piece together how that topic of conversation had come up. He was in the middle of turning his attention back to his book when one of the young women whistled.

"What?" a few others asked, pressing closer to her.

"Maya just sent me a link to this video. Check it out."

Bucky couldn't see the screen but he could hear the sound of shouting and a car. He took a drink of his tea. It tasted like sand.

"Shit," one of them said.

"Did he get run over?"

"And he's—he's just getting up? Damn, that dude's a badass."

Bucky set his mug down and carefully marked his page. So there were other videos of the event that the news had not aired, but were now beginning to spread. That made things much more complicated. Fortunately, none of the teens recognized Bucky from the video. He wanted to think that the video was at a bad angle and that he was safe, but he knew better. His luck had never been that good.

He had to change his appearance a bit. He rubbed his face; his beard had grown thick over the past few months, and so he made plans to shave it—if not entirely, than to just a shadow—and get a haircut for the first time in a long time.

Yeah, that would work.

He got up, paid, and left.

* * *

 _ **Please review.  
**_


	6. Chapter 6

6

The nearest discreet barber shop—in other words, one that wasn't essentially screaming Manly Cuts For Manly Men or Feminine Cuts For Feminine Women in every advertisement pasted in its windows—was several minutes' brisk walk away from the base. Bucky stepped inside the shop and was greeted with a familiar but unfamiliar mix of shampoo and vaguely chemical smells.

"Give me one moment," said a man from over by an occupied chair. There were only six chairs in the whole place, and three of them were full. One other man was working with a customer, his scissors making decisive _snip_ noises every few seconds.

Bucky waited, glancing around the place. The building itself was old, but most of the interior was in good shape, if well-worn. Clearly, this business had been around a while.

"All right, son, what can I do for you?" said the first man as he approached.

"I'd like a haircut and a trim for my beard," Bucky replied.

"Can do. What's your name?"

"William."

"Well, pleasure to do business with you, William. I'm Leroy. Have a seat in that chair right there and I'll be with you in about ten minutes."

Bucky sat in the chair Leroy had indicated. It was the first time in a while he'd had a good chance to look at himself in the mirror, since he usually avoided doing that when he went to Sammy's gym. His hair had grown past his shoulders, and his beard looked scraggly.

 _"Shaggy,"_ a much younger voice in Bucky's head supplied. It sounded like Bucky. _"See, Stevie, when 'm old 'm gonna have a real beard 'n it's gonna be nice 'n ful, not like what you're drawin'. You'll see! Hey, no laughin!"_

The memory-voice faded and Bucky lowered his hand from where he'd been rubbing his chin. That plan hadn't really worked out for the younger him. He sat and waited for eleven minutes as tracked by his internal clock before Leroy came over. The other barber had seen one of the other customers out and was now working on the next one, all the while exchanging friendly quips with Leroy.

"At least I've still got my sock," Leroy said to that man, earning a playful protest in return. "So," Leroy continued, standing behind Bucky, "you wanted a haircut and beard trim, you said?"

Bucky kept his breathing even; Leroy was shorter than him standing but taller when Bucky was sitting, and the experience was throwing a few of Bucky's normal processes out of alignment.

"Yes, that's right."

Leroy leaned over a little, using his hand to indicate. "Did you want it to this length, or this, or…?"

"A little above the shoulders," Bucky said, indicating with his right hand. The left was securely tucked into his pocket and further hidden by a glove. He wasn't feeling up to the prosthetic disguise right now and didn't want to take the unnecessary risk.

"Okay," Leroy said. He pulled out a black smock and draped it over Bucky, fastening it behind Bucky's neck. Bucky clenched his left hand into a fist as the button snapped, expecting the material to fasten tighter than it actually was around his neck. It still wasn't comfortable, but it wasn't going to make Bucky claw his own skin off—for the moment.

Leroy worked with jovial efficiency, occasionally asking Bucky general questions about sports, the weather, and even food. Bucky obliged on all three counts but was for the most part content to listen to Leroy and the other man—whose name turned out to be Jerome—snipe at each other. Bucky was only just beginning to feel the urge the fidget when Leroy finished his haircut. Leroy spun the chair and handed Bucky a small mirror so he could see the back of his own head.

"That style suits you," Leroy declared while Bucky examined the cut. It wasn't completely even and his bangs were still shorter than the rest of his hair, but it was an improvement. "I kept the hair cut unevenly because it looked real nice with that vibe you've got going on, but I can change it if you'd like."

"No, I like it," Bucky said, handing the mirror back. "Thanks."

Leroy grinned at him and glanced at Jerome. "See? At least someone here appreciates my work."

"You appreciate your own work enough for the both of us," Jerome answered. Leroy laughed and shook his head.

Next came the beard trim, and after Bucky specified what he wanted, his thoughts were almost completely subsumed by a low whine that only got louder the more time Leroy spent with the razor by Bucky's face. Bucky battled through the reaction though, reminding himself over and over again that he had chosen this and that he was in a safe location.

He came very, very close to crumpling the armrest of the chair.

"All done," Leroy said, freeing Bucky from the need to consciously keep from deploying the knife on his forearm. "What do you think?"

Bucky stroked the light stubble making a nice shadow across the lower part of his face before nodding in approval.

He paid in cash, of course, and tipped Leroy nicely—not just for the nice service, but because Leroy hadn't reacted beyond initial surprise when Bucky had grabbed his wrist the first time Leroy had brought the razor close.

"Thank you," Bucky said one last time. Leroy nodded.

"You're welcome, son. Take care out there."

The little bell on the door dinged when Bucky left.

* * *

He pushed open the door to the comic book store and, as it did every time, the bell over the door rang. This was a reward trip for going through the haircut experience, one that Bucky did not intend to waste. He glanced over to the counter, where a familiar face smiled at him. It belonged to Jaime, the young man who was often working at this store when Bucky dropped by.

"I was wondering when I'd see you again, Mr. Miller," he said. Bucky smiled back, an expression that was becoming much easier with practice.

"My life has been pretty hectic recently," he replied. "The kids are everywhere."

Jaime nodded sagely. He couldn't be older than twenty-four, but Bucky supposed that he could have had kids—or know someone who did—at that age.

"Either way, it's good to see you."

"Likewise."

"We have a new shipment of comics coming in next week," Jaime added as Bucky went to his usual spot in the back. "I can reserve some, if you'd like."

"No, thank you," Bucky said. "I enjoy looking for them back here."

But the back of the store was not as empty as it had been the last two times Bucky had come to this particular store. There was another person perusing the shelves—an older man, wearing a vest and sweater combination that worked surprisingly well with his pants. He glanced up and saw Bucky, surprise quickly coloring his features.

"Oh!" He visibly scrambled for something to say. "Sorry. I'm—I'm, uh, not used to there being other people back here."

Bucky nodded. "Sorry if I startled you."

"No, no, not at all. Do you need anything here?" He stepped back slightly, indicating the comics by him. Bucky shook his head.

"I'm all good over here, thank you."

The man nodded. "Right, right, of course."

Something about the man was creating low-level static in the back of Bucky's mind. He waited ten more seconds to be sure—spending that time by picking up a comic book and beginning to page through it with apparent interest—and then decided that it was time to leave. He had come too far to risk ignoring his instincts.

Bucky put the comic back.

"Ah, I'm such a sucker for these comics," the man said with visible embarrassment as Bucky crouched down. "Can't get enough of these second-chance stories. They're very well done."

He had no choice but to respond. "Yes," Bucky said carefully. "They are."

The man nodded to himself and went back to his reading. Technically, he had done nothing to warrant suspicion, merely commented on some comic books. And yet, Bucky's heart was pounding and the plates on the metal arm had shifted into combat alignment.

He was going to leave, and he wasn't going to come back here. He had taken too much of a risk by returning here at all. Of course, he'd had no way of knowing this place was being watched, but it was still sloppy.

"Nothing today?" Jaime asked when Bucky headed out. Bucky shook his head.

"No, not today."

He stepped outside and, after a minute spent forcing air into his lungs, Bucky found a bench and sat down, shifting his posture and pulling out a baseball cap to tug on his head. He then unzipped his jacket and rolled up the cuffs of his jeans so that they rested just above the tops of his shoes, instead of draping over them. The small changes wouldn't fool anyone who was paying attention, but Bucky wasn't trying to fool those kinds of people.

Grateful for the large inner pockets in his jacket, Bucky pulled out a small paperback and began to read, keeping an eye on the door to the comic book shop, visible in flashes past the people passing by.

The man came out about ten minutes after Bucky had left. He had bought two comic books, which he was carrying in a small plastic bag. Bucky stayed still, willing himself to be just another member of the crowd.

After a few seconds spent looking around—and skipping straight over Bucky—the man started walking opposite the direction that Bucky's base was. Bucky waited for a full eight seconds before he got up as well and began to follow. He stayed well behind the man and always found something to be doing when the man looked around. Once Bucky had no choice but to walk past the man and then wait in an alley to resume his tail.

This guy was being very paranoid for a person out to buy comics.

Bucky followed the man for another twenty minutes, recognizing poorly-executed attempts to shake a tail as the man doubled back, took narrow routes, and twice cut through storefronts. Bucky followed him through all of it, finding the attempts almost cute in their futility.

Finally the man arrived at his destination: a clothing store. Bucky watched him go inside. With the way the building was designed, a back exit was unlikely, and when the man did not emerge after fifteen minutes, Bucky decided that this was a location that he needed more information on.

His armory back at the base was woefully inadequate, amounting to a single handgun and only four knives, one of which was kept with the handgun and the rest he always hid somewhere on his person. Currently he had one in his boot, one sheathed on the small of his back, and one in a discreet sheath on his forearm. A nice little piece of engineering that Bucky had liberated from a shop somewhere in his first couple of weeks as not-Winter-Soldier, the sheath allowed Bucky to release the knife with a spring mechanism that would send the blade up his forearm and into his hand provided he made the correct gesture and tensed his muscles just so.

Still, that wasn't nearly enough to take on what could be a HYDRA base. He didn't have any armor either; his denim jeans were the most protective things he owned, excepting, of course, the metal arm.

Bucky spent that afternoon examining the arm and making sure that it was functional. He had to liberate a mirror from a local apartment to do it—fortunately, this one had no cat to judge him—but he had confirmed its total functionality within one hour of examination.

He spent that night watching the clothing shop. Its real purpose as a hideout quickly became clear as men and women went in but didn't come out for hours. It did function as a legitimate shop, but there was something going on behind the door to the storage area. Some research revealed that the property had a basement that the most recent blueprints for the clothing shop did not show.

Over the course of a seven-hour observation period during the night, Bucky counted thirteen potential enemies enter. Four of those people exited within three hours while the rest remained inside. For a business that was supposed to be closed, it certainly had a lot of foot traffic.

Next on the list was checking for cameras. The shop's camera clearly wasn't functional—Bucky was familiar with the model and could see the missing power cable from across the street—while the street cameras were, for whatever reason, all pointed away from the shop.

How convenient.

The next morning he had brunch at a nice café about four blocks away from Stark Tower. Or Avengers Tower—Bucky didn't really pay attention to whatever the media was calling the thing these days. Either way, the close proximity kept Bucky alert throughout his meal of French toast, bacon, sausage, eggs, fruit, toast, and apple juice. He paid for his meal and then left a tip for the waitress who had appeared more than slightly incredulous when Bucky had eaten every piece of food he'd ordered.

He then ambled over to a cozy military surplus store and chatted with the aging woman behind the counter while he examined the very nice heavy pants and jackets. Bucky bought a jacket but not pants—his jeans would do, and he didn't have the space for more. The nice lady didn't bat an eye when Bucky paid in cash and even wished him a good day when he left.

Bucky dropped off the jacket back at the base and then went out again, settling down on a bench in a small park to help calm his mind for the upcoming fight. There were kids horsing around on the jungle gym despite the Spring chill, their parents talking amongst themselves at one of the few picnic tables scattered around. The scene eased some of the tension bunched in Bucky's muscles and he spent almost two hours there. Towards the end of his stay a young man—about Bucky's age, if Bucky didn't count his time with the Russians and HYDRA—walked over and introduced himself.

"Hey, I'm Travis," he said, sticking out a hand. Bucky marked his page, set his book aside, and returned the handshake.

"William," Bucky said.

"I, uh, was wondering what you're doing out here," Travis continued. Bucky saw the blood flushing his cheeks red and realized what was going on.

"Reading," Bucky replied. "Though I was planning on leaving soon."

"What book?"

Bucky showed him and Travis's eyebrows went up. "I had to read that in college. Tough book."

"It's interesting."

"I won't deny that. Say, my friends and I were gonna go get coffee after this."

Bucky glanced past Travis and saw a group of two other men and a women chatting near the swing set. They were all around Travis's age. Then he refocused on Travis, making his tone as apologetic as possible.

"I have plans, but thank you."

"Oh." Travis swallowed. Bucky stood up.

"It was nice to meet you," he said. Travis nodded. Bucky gave him credit; he was taking the rejection for what it was and not complaining.

"Likewise. See you around."

Bucky nodded and began walking away. To get back to his base, Bucky had to circle back around the fence around the park and pass by the swing set. He did that just in time to hear Travis say to his friends,

"His eyes are unfairly gorgeous."

They laughed and poked fun, their jovial attitude towards the whole encounter sticking with Bucky even when he made it back to the base. He thought about it as he pulled apart and cleaned his gun. Back before, that kind of thing just didn't happen. Or if it did, it happened behind closed doors or under some kind of disguise. Not in a park in broad daylight with plenty of witnesses.

Bucky wasn't sure what to make of the change. It wasn't bad, just…different.

He pulled on his new jacket and did a couple of checks to make sure that all of his weapons were still relatively accessible. The one on the small of his back was really only for emergencies, as was the one in his boot. The first test with the one on his forearm yielded a tear in the cuff of the jacket, but some quick adjusting solved that problem. Bucky munched on a protein bar while he retied his boots a little tighter, mostly using his lips to keep the bar in place while he used both his hands to tie.

His hair went up into a tight bun. Some of his shorter bangs still hung around his eyes and tickled his cheeks—the haircut hadn't helped with that—but for the most part it was out of his face and would be much harder for an attacker to grab.

After a few last checks, Bucky slipped the gun inside his jacket and sat back to wait for sunset.

* * *

 _ **Please review.  
**_


	7. Chapter 7

7

Sunset arrived and passed. Tonight was a waning moon beset by clouds, giving Bucky the cover of almost complete darkness between the streetlights when he set out. He carried no bag, just the clothes on his back and the weapons hidden on his person. The crowds were thinner at this hour, and in most places virtually nonexistent. There were only fifteen people on the clothing shop's block when Bucky arrived, and all except two very intimately involved individuals were on their way out.

The shop had closed a few hours previously, but Bucky knew from watching that the door could be unlocked from the outside by pressing a certain part of the doorframe. Bucky did just that and walked inside, for all intents and purposes a member of whatever organization had decided that this was its new home. There was no one in the main area of the shop and Bucky ghosted between racks of clothing, keeping to the deep shadows. The door to the storage room behind the counter was locked and required some kind of password that Bucky hadn't been able to catch, so he settled in a rack of shirts and waited.

No more than twelve minutes passed before a young man with a bright orange pair of shoes walked in and went to the door.

The password turned out to be "Cherry-flavored orange," because why the hell not. The door opened and the man walked through. Bucky followed, vaulting the counter and landing on silent feet before sliding through the door right before it closed. Beyond the door were racks of clothing not yet put out for sale. Again, Bucky could hear no one inside except the young man walking confidently among the shelves. Bucky shadowed him to the back right corner, where the man whispered a different password—"We are ducks walking in the footsteps of Minotaurs," whatever the hell that meant—and again a door opened. This time, Bucky caught sight of someone actually doing the opening in person, instead of remotely.

The man went through and the door slid shut, all but invisible with its edges sitting flush against the wall. Bucky saw the faintest outlines of a slot for the person behind the door to peer through and so he went through the various shelves, soon finding a cap that would do the trick.

Bucky approached the door with the cap shadowing his face, an effect that was compounded by the already-dark room. The slot opened and a gruff voice said, "Password."

A repetition of the phrase Bucky had overheard earned him an open door. Bucky thought about how these guys gave "insecure" an entirely new definition while he forced the man behind the door into a blood choke. Waiting over a minute just to be sure, Bucky then dragged the man back into the storage room and hid the body. The door was still open and Bucky stepped through, eyeing the staircase that stretched below.

He pulled out his handgun, flipped off the safety, and descended.

The next person he encountered met the same fate of the doorman. As Bucky put the man into a blood choke and slid out of sight of the main area, he considered whether he should attempt to explore this facility without using his weapon. The gunshots would be loud no matter what he did—the silencer only did so much—and would give him away.

He would return fire only if the other team decided to bring guns into play, Bucky decided. He let the body he was holding slide to the floor, hidden from outside view by the desk. Bucky booted up the computer, frowning when he saw the password requirement. He frisked the body and came up with nothing except a keycard, which he pocketed. Then Bucky found the HYDRA pin on the man's shirt, hidden from first glance by his vest.

Bucky crushed the pin between the fingers of his metal hand and then went back to the computer, inputting a few passwords that floated to the front of his brain when his fingers went to the keys. The third one worked and Bucky was confronted with information about the money-laundering operation going on down here. There was little else; this was a small base, if it could even be called that much, and the people going in and out were just carriers.

But it didn't explain why some people came in here and then didn't leave. There were at least three that had entered that Bucky had never seen exit. He was looking through some of the more auspiciously titled folders when he heard the knock at the door.

Bucky made sure that the man's body was well and truly out of view and then he went up the stairs, sliding his gun into the holster strapped underneath his jacket.

"Password," Bucky said after sliding open the viewing port and seeing the young woman on the other side. She said exactly what Bucky and the man before him said and Bucky opened the door for her. She stepped through, paying Bucky absolutely no mind on her way down. Bucky shut the door and followed on silent feet.

The woman paused by the desk, glancing around with obvious irritation. Bucky came up behind her and chopped the back of her neck with the metal hand. Bone crunched under the force the prosthetic limb delivered and the woman crumpled. Bucky put her under the desk as well, leaving her body to stare glassy-eyed at the woodwork.

He then proceeded deeper into the basement. He passed several cubicles and then a room where the bulk of the money laundering appeared to take place. If what he had seen on the computer was all that this place had to offer, that should have been the end of it. But there was one more door at the end of a short hallway. This one was bolted shut and had a keypad next to it.

Bucky considered the new obstacle for a moment before he turned around and headed back. He would deal with the rest of the people in this place before he risked trapping himself in whatever room lay beyond that door.

The first room he cleared was the one with the big machine chugging out fake dollars. The noise it made covered Bucky's approach as he snuck up on the first of the three men standing near the machine. They were focused on bins of chemicals and Bucky had killed two before the third so much as looked up. When the last rat did realize that Bucky was there and registered that his two compatriots were dead at Bucky's feet, he opened his mouth to shout. Bucky rewarded his naïveté with a knife to the throat.

"Like I'd let you warn them," Bucky told the man as he gurgled out his last words. Bucky stepped around the spouts of blood and left the man to bleed out and entered the next room, his recovered knife hidden against his palm. He could snap it back into the forearm sheath once he wasn't in immediate danger anymore.

There were four people in the cubicle room. Bucky spent a moment disabling the single camera in the room by using the keycard on a cleverly hidden panel and inputting the same password that had been on the computer. Then he spent a second observing the people inside. Two were tapping away at computers while the other two were chatting by a coffee machine. Bucky ghosted inside and stuck by the thin cubicle walls that easily hid him from sight while he approached his quarry. In two minutes he had silenced both of the people in their cubicles, the murders drowned out by the machine one room over. Bucky then left the room, made sure there was no obvious blood on his clothes, and reentered with a wave to the two people at the coffee machine. They waved back, paying no mind to the fact that they had never seen Bucky before.

Bucky got close, overhearing a snippet about a recent football game before the two realized that he had approached.

"You new here?" one of them asked. Bucky shrugged.

"Not really."

The knife went into the man's throat. The woman barely had time to blink before Bucky's foot caught her in the ribs and sent her flying back into the wall. Her head cracked against the concrete. While the man spluttered and collapsed, his hands unable to even grasp at the knife buried in his neck, Bucky made sure that the woman was dead. Then he yanked his knife out of the man's throat and stomped on his neck just to be sure. His boot got some blood on it, but nothing too noticeable. Bucky cleaned off the weapon on the man's shirt and sheathed it before glancing around.

He had been expecting much more of a fight. These weren't high-level HYDRA personnel, just desk workers. Bucky searched their bodies for anything that could be a pass code to the locked room and came up empty. Even the computer had nothing.

Bucky stood straight and considered his options. The man at the comic book store had come to this location after seeing Bucky for a reason, and it wasn't to grab a nice wad of counterfeit cash. There was something behind that door. Something important. Something that Bucky had to know about.

After a minute spent on a fruitless search for better weapons, Bucky stepped over the bodies and went back to the door. He went to the keypad and let his hand hover over it. Nothing came to him. Bucky tried two basic codes—five ones, and then the numbers one through five in sequence—and came up blank. He did know the keypad model, through, and was aware that a third wrong try would send an alarm out.

"Fine, if you're gonna be like that," Bucky told the thing.

Then he forced the fingers of the metal hand into the small gap between the door and wall, the weaker metal of the door giving out and providing Bucky with a handhold. After twenty seconds of Bucky straining, the door finally began to give way. Another minute, and Bucky had peeled the thing open from the top, exposing the metal bolt in the middle keeping the door actually shut. Bucky scowled at that bolt and then went to work, peeling away as much of the door as he could so that the thing ended up being wrapped around the bolt. Bucky left it like that; it wasn't worth it to bust that last set of hinges. He crouched underneath the door and stood up on the other side. His entrance had made quite the racket, but no one had responded.

Odd.

Bucky pulled out his pistol as he went through the silent halls. After another door—locked, but this time a combination of the card a code of all ones worked—Bucky finally heard a sound: screaming.

His grip on the weapon tightened and Bucky slowed his approach, keeping an eye out for other doors. But there were none; just this one route leading to a single destination.

There was finally a turn in the hallway. Bucky slowed and then glanced around the corner, seeing a guard at the end of the hall. This one had body armor and a rifle. Bucky slipped back into the empty hallway and checked his gun. The man was about fifteen meters away, easily within range. Bucky aligned himself with his memory and came around the corner with the handgun already aimed at the guard's head. Bucky let off two shots—one higher, one lower—just to be sure. The weapon kicked in his hands and the guard went down.

Bucky waited. He could still hear the muffled screams, unchanged by the gunshots. He'd timed the shots approximately to when the screams were loudest, but it was impossible to know whether that had made a difference.

After a minute, Bucky got his answer. The door the guard had been standing by opened and four more men poured out, armed in the same way as their compatriot. Bucky repeated the process he had used with the first guard and the new arrivals went down. As Bucky approached them, though, he realized that one had twisted and taken the bullets to his shoulder instead of his head. The wounded soldier tried to aim his rifle at Bucky, but didn't do it fast enough. He died with a bullet to the brain and Bucky relieved him of the weapon he no longer needed. After checking the magazine and making sure the safety was off, Bucky walked through the doorway.

Bucky stopped in a kind of observation room. In front of him stretched a bank of windows looking into what had to be labs for experimentation. Human subjects—three of them, all of whom Bucky had watched enter the store—were stretched out on the tables. Two were the sources of the screaming. The third was ominously silent, her eyes staring at the ceiling with the gaze of the dead even though her chest still rose and fell.

There were men in lab coats hustling around—three at first count, then a fourth entered the scene. There were two more guards, but these scientists—if they could even be called that—didn't seem concerned about their subjects breaking out. Bucky doubted any of them could even stand.

The windows had to be two-way mirrors, because no one reacted when Bucky stood and stared for a minute. The scientists were hustling about, clearly panicked from the earlier gunfight, but they seemed to be confident that the threat had been taken care of.

Bucky could fix that.

He did a quick check of what he could see of the layout. The entire area was a giant square with a hallway wrapping all the way around the labs, connecting with either side of the observation room. The labs were surrounded by metal-braced glass walls and sliding doors. Bucky wouldn't be able to walk in without being spotted no matter what he did.

Another scream made him wince internally. The sound and his surroundings were making very uncomfortable echoes in his brain and his level of mental static was twice its baseline.

But he couldn't leave. Now that he was here, he had to do something. At the very least, it would silence the sweater guy before he told anyone about Bucky. The sweater guy was one of the scientists and Bucky could see him tending to the person who wasn't screaming, if injecting the person with a strange yellow substance could be considered "tending."

Bucky watched, unable to tear his eyes away, as the person's body started to shake. Within twenty seconds of injection the person was caught in the throes of intense muscle spasms and the _sound_ —

Goosebumps broke out on Bucky's skin in response to the noise coming out of the person's mouth. It barely sounded human, but the sweater guy just watched and tapped away at his tablet until the person finally collapsed.

Their chest wasn't moving anymore.

White rage flooded Bucky's veins. It wasn't for the person who had just died or the apathy of the scientist who was calmly plugging in the time of death. It wasn't for the entire lab and all the other people who had undoubtedly died in this place. It was for the organization that was still performing these goddamned fucked-up experiments even after they'd been thrust into the spotlight because they didn't give two shits about human lives or people, they just cared about manipulation and experimentation and pushing the limits as though anyone was meant to survive those kinds of procedures because they thought they were fucking _gods_ —

Bucky pulled his knife out of the first guard's neck. He wasn't aware of how he had gotten to the guard or even when he had started moving. But now the scientists were reacting and the other guard was running towards him and there wasn't an emotion in Bucky anymore. He was a brain attached to a hand attached to a gun.

The guard fired wildly down the hallway Bucky occupied. Bucky turned, punched out the glass leading into the nearest lab room, and dove through. The scientist inside quailed the face of his demise. Bucky put him out of his misery and then used the metal operating table as cover. Bucky crouched with his back to the table, listening to the sounds the guard's equipment made when the guard moved. Those sounds gave away the guard's position as he stood in front of the broken glass, weapon undoubtedly raised as he searched for Bucky.

Bucky could also hear the heartbeat of the person on the table. He was done screaming, and so only produced pitiful moans every few seconds. Bucky wondered if the guard was hesitating to pursue because he wasn't allowed to harm the patient.

Movement in the corner of his eye had Bucky launching himself to one side. A bullet punched into the side of the metal table and Bucky shot twice, hitting the scientist who had fired in the leg and the arm. The woman shrieked in pain and went down, dropping her pistol on the way. Bucky fired a bullet near the sweater-scientist when he made a move to recover the weapon.

The sweater scientist made eye contact with Bucky, and a moment later recognition filled his eyes. Bucky's brain processed a myriad of responses to that recognition and boxed them away to be examined when he and that man were nice and alone.

Meanwhile, Bucky spun out from behind his cover and fired two shots at the security guard. One hit the man in the chest and the other went wide when the man started to move. The guard staggered from the impact of the first bullet but still got several retaliatory bursts off. Bucky deflected most of the bullets with his arm, but two grazed his side and one took a chunk out of his left calf.

Bucky finished off the guard and turned to see the sweater-scientist reaching for the gun. He gained a hole in his bicep for his trouble. While the sweater-scientist writhed on the ground, Bucky checked to make sure that there were no other threats. The last scientist wasn't visible at first glance and Bucky went into the next lab, stepping over the first female scientist still bleeding out from her two bullet wounds. The sweater-scientist wisely did nothing, and Bucky grabbed the pistol just to make sure that the man didn't mistakenly think he had a chance of defending himself.

The last scientist was hiding behind the lab table of the last screamer. Bucky stood in front of him as he scrambled away, pleading that his life be spared. He was barely audible over the sounds the teenager on the table was making.

"Please, please, I'm just here for the science, really, please, I have a family—"

Bucky shot him in the stomach and left him to bleed. Then he checked the medical records of the teenager on the table. His brain recognized some of the names and associated them with pain and a myriad of other experiences better left buried.

There was no saving this boy. Bucky raised the gun and aimed it at the boy's head. A quick death—painless, compared to what he was going through now. Bucky rested his finger on the trigger but before he pulled it, the boy's eyes fixed on Bucky's face.

He didn't say anything—Bucky doubted he could even form words—but there was no fear in his eyes. Just pain.

Bucky pulled the trigger. The boy's body slumped as red splattered onto the table beneath him, and the scientist whimpered as though he honestly thought that Bucky was going to waste another bullet on him.

"Please," the scientist whispered. Bucky didn't spare him so much as a glance before he went back to Sweater.

"How did you find me," Bucky asked, but it wasn't a question.

"I don't—"

"Why did you talk to me," Bucky asked, and his tone was still flat and cold.

"What are you—"

"Who did you tell."

"I don't kn—"

"Who. Knows."

Bucky had taken a step forward with each question until he was standing almost on top of Sweater, who was so pale and shaking so hard that Bucky wondered if his throat was closing. Bucky decided to spare Sweater the effort of staring up at him and threw the man up against a cabinet, letting him slump into a sitting position on the floor. Bucky crouched in front of him, keeping Sweater's chin tipped up with the end of his gun.

"Name," Bucky said.

"D-Daniel Alden," he babbled.

"Job."

"R-researcher."

"Organization."

Silence. Bucky narrowed his eyes.

"Organization."

Alden set his jaw, meeting Bucky's eyes in a foolish attempt to bolster his own courage. "HYDRA."

Bucky spread his lips in an approximation of a smile. Without turning away from the man in front of him, he turned and shot the female scientist before she could do anything with the syringe in her bloodied hand. Alden's courage melted as his last colleague died.

"I won't ask again," Bucky told him. He spoke quietly so Alden had to focus all of his attention on understanding the words. "And if I like your answers, you might just make it out of here under your own power. So. How did you find me?"

Alden lasted all of three seconds before he folded under the pressure of the deaths, his wounds, and Bucky's gaze.

"Chance." He looked away, focusing on his lap. "I visit that comic store twice a week."

"Why did you talk to me?"

Alden swallowed. "To test how much you had self-actualized."

"Who did you tell?"

"My superiors." Alden glanced up for a second before looking down again. "By now, everyone knows you're here, in New York. They'll come for you."

Bucky's expression wasn't anything like a smile now.

"Let them try."

He ended Alden with a bullet to the heart. He spent the next half an hour scrubbing the place of evidence that he'd been there. Fortunately, with it being a super-secret base—never mind that Bucky had found it easily—there were no cameras in this part of the building. The bodies he left alone, save for taking some of the money. Bucky lingered by the people strapped to the tables, but there was nothing he could do for them that he hadn't already done. By the time he'd finished with Alden, the one moaning on the table had simply been gasping. Bucky had ended that suffering as well.

Once he was finished with the lower floor, he retraced his steps back up to the supply room. There was one camera there in the upper right corner by the entrance from the store proper. Bucky dragged over a shelf and then climbed it to reach the device. The metal hand made quick work of the camera and the storage unit inside. He repeated the process with the hidden cameras inside the store, trusting the darkness to hide him from any unwanted observers.

The sun was just beginning to rise by the time Bucky finished examining the base for any evidence or information he might have missed. The base had little, just details on the experimentation that had gone on inside. These people had been trying to find a drug that would weaken the mind and another that would strengthen the body. Bucky purged the data as best he could—some of the files contained pass codes he had no knowledge of, and much of it had already been sent to different locations.

When it was done, he did one last sweep and then slipped away into the abandoned dark, little more than a shadow dissipating in the light.

* * *

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	8. Chapter 8

_A warning for not-so-nice dissociation/flashback events. Take care of yourselves, readers._

* * *

8

Bucky spent the entirety of the next day at his base. He'd kept the rifle and several magazines' worth of ammunition, figuring he'd put it to better use than HYDRA. He still had enough food to keep him going, and there was enough space in the parking structure for him to go through his entire exercise routine. He wasn't risking going to Sammy's gym—not when HYRDA had just found out where he was.

Outside, clouds hung low in the sky and wispy fog snaked through the streets. The sun, when Bucky went outside to do a perimeter sweep, was little more than a washed-out ball in a patch of lighter gray in the sky. Time was passing but at half its usual speed, and so Bucky wasted minutes that should have been hours trying to puzzle out why his hand was shaking.

It shook throughout his workout. It shook when he ate, when he meditated, when he read. It shook when he tried to keep it still.

The metal hand was fine. But his flesh hand—he could barely hold anything. He started to pace just to try to burn off some of the energy building in his system but it did nothing to help. He stopped and focused on his breathing. There was something going on in his head, something wrong, and he could feel it coming like the tide rolling in.

Of course, nothing he did could prepare him when the panic attack hit.

The world accelerated. Not by half again or even twice—maybe three times or four, probably five times and Bucky was left three seconds behind. The shaking spread from his hand to his lungs. No amount of measured breathing helped, and then his brain skipped a beat and got stuck.

Bucky sat—or had he already been sitting?—and narrowed his attention to the concrete right between his legs. Despite his best efforts his eyes lost focus, the world blurred, and his thoughts began to loop memories of bodies he'd dropped.

At first he could breathe through it. At first it was the HYDRA base. At first it was the scientists and the guards. At first he could think through it.

And then came the deeper creatures. A young politician. A baby and its family. Three businessmen and the train they were riding on. A Nazi camp. A military leader.

They flashed through his brain at rate that never stopped accelerating and Bucky grabbed his hair in his fists and tried to use the pain to drag himself back but his mind wasn't his to control. The things he'd done had him trapped and there was nothing he could do—

Stark's parents died under his hands. A president got a knife in the back. A father had his drink poisoned and died in front of his children.

"Stop," Bucky said, or at least he thought he said it. Maybe the real speaker was the man getting his face crushed under Bucky's fist, or the child being executed at point-blank range. Maybe the word came from the man standing in front of his spouse's grave or the party guest still shaking off the effects of his cocktail.

"Please."

The montage never stopped. Bucky struggled to stay standing in the storm of names and faces and stories he'd ended and his mind didn't discriminate between the old or the new, the voluntary and involuntary.

All of it. All at once.

Bucky's grip on reality slipped and he was gone.

* * *

He came back to himself roughly fifteen minutes later. It started with awareness of something dead in his mouth, which turned out to be his tongue after a few seconds of investigation. Something cold and gritty pressed against his face and when Bucky managed to get his eyes open, all he saw was gray. He blinked a few times and swallowed, finally getting a mental picture of where his body was. His arms were stretched out by his head; the metal one was visible if he looked up a little.

His brain slowly began to cycle up to its normal levels and Bucky pushed himself into a sitting position. Head pulsing, Bucky took stock of his surroundings. Nothing had changed. The dusty parking structure was still dusty. The crappy weather was still crappy.

"Fuck," Bucky muttered, tilting his head back and closing his eyes. His balance wavered but he managed to catch himself. His hair hung over his face.

He needed a shower.

Bucky scrubbed his hands over his face, shoved his hair back, and then dragged himself to his feet. His hand wasn't shaking anymore but the change hadn't happened for any good reasons. It wasn't that the muscles were tired. His brain was tired. Wrung out.

The world wasn't gray but that was all the color Bucky could process for the next five minutes while he cleaned himself up. The rest of the spectrum bled into place as he shrugged on a jacket. It wasn't the one he'd worn in the HYDRA base, but the pressure in the similar spaces still made Bucky pause.

Inhale, pause, exhale.

He needed to move but wanted to rest. For a minute his body and brain disagreed, leaving Bucky in limbo until his brain gave up and Bucky began a perimeter sweep even though he had performed one an hour ago.

Every time he closed his eyes he could see the faces. In most of them there was no guilt, no fear—they'd died before they had been able to realize he was there to kill them—but that just made it worse.

 _"Howard…"_

Bucky stopped at the top of the ramp and took a deep breath.

He knew exactly how many hits it had taken to kill Howard Stark. He knew exactly how long it had taken to choke Maria Stark. He knew exactly how he'd only identified them as the targets and the briefcase as the objective. He knew it all.

Inhale, pause, exhale.

Identified: unidentifiable emotion.

Bucky forced one foot in front of the other. What did his brain want? Justification? An excuse? There was none. He'd done all of that. Even if he was under HYDRA's control, he'd done all of it.

He'd _broken_ in HYDRA's hands and he'd let them shape him into a weapon. The old Bucky Barnes folded. Gave up.

 _"He's not coming for you. No one is. You have been abandoned."_

He'd resisted at first. Bucky remembered that. Fought with everything he had to get out, to keep his head.

 _James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038._

He'd lost. Week after week, month after month of no rescue, of no Howling Commandos busting down the door, of no goddamned Steve-Captain-Rogers-America bursting into the labs to save him again.

He'd only gotten two chances. This—what he was doing right now, shuffling around a parking structure in the miserable rain like some kind of specter—wasn't a third. This was setting his jaw and clawing his way through time. This was the most twisted kind of luck. This was a knife in Steve's back being twisted again and again every day because Bucky was too much of a coward to look him in the eye.

How long had Steve spent looking for him? How many sleepless nights had Bucky cost him?

And of course Steve was pretending like everything was fine. Bucky didn't even have to watch the news to know that Steve was out doing missions. He'd always been like that: a man with a cause. Sometimes it was a war. Sometimes it was getting someone to shut up in a movie theater. Sometimes it was finding a way to distract himself from all his problems.

 _Jeez, Barnes,_ Bucky thought dryly, _be a little bitterer next time, will ya?_

He was halfway through his perimeter check by now. The fog and the light rain it hid were slowly soaking through Bucky's clothes. His hair was already hanging in soggy strands, but at least that made it easier to push it out of his face.

Everything sounded a little muffled, but Bucky couldn't tell whether that was his brain or the weather. Maybe it was both.

After another minute Bucky stopped and leaned against the side of the parking structure. The massive column stretched far over his head and helped to ground him through its sheer size.

He hadn't felt like this since the first time he thought of himself as Bucky. Not when Steve had said those words—not on the Helicarrier. That had been the breaking point. _A_ breaking point. One more crack in a long series of breaks stretching all over his brain showing that _this was not right_ , that the orders were wrong, that _he_ was wrong, that the whole goddamned _world_ was wrong. Everything had come crashing down on that flying ship and he'd been in too much pain to really think straight, but he'd known that he was missing something since the start.

 _"Please don't make me do this."_

A plea. Worthless. Odd in that context but not something that would deter the Soldier.

And then the target had been so _persistent._ So _determined_. So—

Real.

And _that_ was more headache territory, so Bucky forced himself away from those thoughts and focused on the sensation of the fog beading on his skin. He was here now—in this place, in his body—even if it sometimes seemed as though his mind was being stretched between two points that were constantly moving farther apart.

A sardonic laugh forced itself out of Bucky's mouth. If Steve could see him now. God, the look on his face alone would rip Bucky's chest in two. He'd probably look like a kicked puppy.

 _"Hey, Steve,"_ Bucky imagined saying, _"it's your old pal Buck."_

No, that wasn't quite right.

 _"Hey, Steve. It's your pal Bucky. I need help."_

"So much help," Bucky amended verbally, tilting his head back against the concrete pillar and letting the light rain patter against his face. He could feel every drop; his body was hyperaware but he was still so, so tired.

 _"Hey, Steve. Sorry I took so long—I was busy trying to drown myself in fog."_

Bucky snorted to himself.

He managed to finish the perimeter sweep, though by the end he wasn't really seeing much. Lunch and dinner were sad combinations of bruised fruit, protein bars, and something in a can that was probably supposed to be ravioli. Too tired to do anything else, Bucky lay down and closed his eyes.

Sleep met him like a storm at sea.

* * *

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	9. Chapter 9

He woke the next day—discounting the numerous periods of semi-consciousness during the night due to nightmares—still feeling off. The worst part was that he could not pin down the feeling or find an action that would make it go away. He tried a light workout. He tried meditating. He tried eating. And when none of that worked, he tried going for a walk.

Baseball cap shoved low over his eyes and jacket hiding his arm, Bucky went out onto the streets with the sole purpose of getting his mind to stop functioning two inches to the left.

The weather was still crappy, but at least it wasn't raining. Bucky stopped in a café and picked up a hot chocolate. It was a little too sweet for his taste, but the warmth between his hands was nice. The drink nearly scalded his tongue on the first few sips, but after that it was tolerable.

He passed a few old newspaper dispensers. All three of them were different colors, and all three were streaked with rust and wear. Bucky crouched by one and read the headline.

 _AVENGERS SAVE DAY IN PHOENIX_

The half of the article Bucky could see talked about how a group with alien technology had tried to hold the city hostage. He checked the date: almost a month ago.

He moved on.

No one paid him any mind as he sipped his hot chocolate and walked down the sidewalk. Everyone had somewhere to go or someone to meet. Bucky watched conversations ebb and flow around him as someone got on the bus or finished a call or strolled down the sidewalk with a friend.

This time, when Bucky settled down on a bench, no one tried to ask him out. He was almost disappointed.

 _"Hey Steve, guess what? While you were off fighting bad guys, your assassin-cyborg friend went and got himself a boyfriend. How's that?"_

Yeah, no.

He wasn't even confident about the "friend" thing, much less the rest of it. Steve'd probably punch him before anything else.

God knew he deserved it.

Bucky leaned back and appeared to doze, but his eyes were slitted open and constantly looking around. The hubbub around him muddled his ability to hear anything specific, but it was hard to miss when the ambient noise began to fade. The number of cars passing him during any given minute changed from thirty to five to none. Bucky watched as the people who had been walking by began to thin.

He tipped up his hat and glanced around. There were police vehicles on either end of the block and officers there were quickly and quietly directing people away.

One of the officers looked up and made eye contact with Bucky.

For an instant, nothing.

Then all hell broke loose.

Bucky shot to his feet among shouting from the officers and suddenly people were running by him in panic. A gunshot split the air and a person next to Bucky went down with a hole in her thigh and a scream on her lips. Bucky stopped running, cursing his inability to look away.

If she stayed down, she was going to get trampled. If she didn't get trampled, she would bleed to death.

And if Bucky stayed here, he was going to get shot.

Dammit.

He grabbed the woman under her arms and half-dragged, half-carried her into a nearby storefront. The crowds were far too thin now to risk running, never mind that there were cops on both ends.

"What's your name?" Bucky asked while he helped the woman to sit against the inside of the register counter. The wood wouldn't stop a bullet, but it would hide from sight them until the police decided to come inside. And if they knew who Bucky was and were scared enough to risk shooting a civilian, that would probably take a while.

"Robin," she said. Her face was pale, her Japanese features twisted in pain.

"I'm James. Can you move your foot and toes?" Bucky asked while he tried to see the extent of the wound.

Robin nodded, biting her lip. "It hurts more," she managed after a beat. Bucky nodded.

"We need to lift your leg," he said. "But first, I think—yeah."

Bucky shrugged off his jacket and then his shirt. Robin's eyes went wide at the sight of his arm, so Bucky quickly put his jacket back on. The glove on his left hand wasn't going to do him any favors now, so Bucky stuffed that into a pocket so it wouldn't get damaged and tore up his shirt to make a quick bandage.

"What are you doing?" Robin asked as Bucky wound the cloth around her leg. She hissed through her teeth when Bucky pulled it tight.

"Bandage," Bucky explained. He paused for a second, listening to see if what he had just heard was a footstep. When nothing else happened, he resumed his task. "It's going to be tight, but that's to slow the bleeding. The bullet is still inside, but it's too deep for me to pull out without risking more damage." Especially since Robin didn't have enhanced healing or an enhanced immune system. "Now we have to raise your leg."

"Right," Robin said, her voice tight with pain.

Bucky guided her onto her back and filched some pillows and clothes from around the store that Robin could rest her leg on. Robin was getting paler, but the bullet had missed her femoral artery and most of the major muscle groups. As long as she got serious medical attention soon, she would survive.

For a couple of minutes, the only sounds in the store were Robin's breathing and Bucky's heartbeat. Bucky doubted that Robin could hear the latter, though.

Identified: adrenaline spike.

Inhale, pause, exhale.

"Who are you?" Robin asked. Bucky glanced at her; he was sitting a yard or two away, also behind the counter, with his back against a cabinet door.

"James," he said.

Robin had her face pointed at the ceiling but Bucky could still see her mouth twist. "That's not what I meant."

Bucky said nothing in the vain hope that Robin would not have the energy or the desire to pursue that question. Unfortunately, she had both.

"Are you the one they're looking for?"

She didn't sound scared or angry. Just curious and tired. Bucky got up and checked her improvised bandage. It was soaked through. He glanced out the shop's front windows; the police didn't seem to be canvassing the street yet. Maybe some civilians were being obstinate. Maybe they were afraid. The circumstances worked to Bucky's advantage either way. He left the cover of the desk and snatched a few more shirts off a nearby display table before returning to Robin.

"This is going to hurt," Bucky warned as he put more clothes around the wound. The blood soaking his shirt had loosened the fabric, allowing more blood to escape. Robin groaned as Bucky worked.

"You never answered," she said when he was done and had directed her to put pressure on the wound. Bucky sat back in a crouch next to her.

Her eyes were fixed on his. She already knew the answer; she was asking to be—what, polite?

Bucky sighed. "I am."

"Why?" Seeing Bucky's confusion, she elaborated. "Doesn't seem normal for a criminal to help someone who got shot in front of him." She paused for a minute, her eyelids fluttering while she struggled to stay focused. Bucky watched her. She needed more help than he could provide, faster than he could get it to her. "Much less stay with her and risk himself in the process. So why?"

Bucky looked away from her. He considered telling the truth, but he didn't want to deal with whatever fallout it would bring. He settled on a vague shadow of the truth.

"I did some bad stuff a long time ago," he said quietly. "Now it's caught up with me."

It took Robin almost thirty seconds to realize that he was being honest.

"Seriously?" she said, a tinge of incredulity touching her voice. "And _this_ is how they try to catch you?" She shook her head, a short, pained motion. "Sorry, no. I don't buy it."

"It's the truth."

"It's not the whole truth."

Bucky glanced back at her face. She was still staring at him.

"Do you have a phone?" Bucky finally asked.

Robin managed a wry grin. "For what? Calling the police?"

Bucky shook his head. "Calling an ambulance."

That gave Robin pause. "Is it…is it really that bad?"

There was already a dark red stain on the white shirt Bucky had wrapped last around her leg specifically for the purpose of showing how quickly she was bleeding.

"I'm sorry," Bucky told her softly. Robin blinked before she snorted.

"Don't apologize. You didn't shoot me."

"But—"

"You didn't. My phone is in my jacket's right front pocket."

Bucky quickly dialed the emergency number.

"911, what's your emergency?" said the male voice on the other side.

"I have a gunshot victim in the Tracey's Vintage store on East Twenty-Eighth Street, just past Fifth Avenue. Twenties, physically fit. The wound is to the thigh, bullet's still inside. It appears to have missed the femoral artery and most major muscle groups, but she's been bleeding for about seven minutes with improvised bandaging and pressure on the wound."

The operator was quiet for a few seconds. "Has anyone else been injured?"

"I don't know."

"What's your full name?"

Bucky's eyes skated over to Robin, who mouthed a name at him.

"Patrick Holland."

"Okay. Help is on the way. Please stay on the line until police and paramedics arrive."

Bucky frowned. The phone was loud enough that Robin had heard it too, and her brows had furrowed.

"Sir, the police are already here," Bucky said slowly. "They're the ones who shot this woman."

This time the silence lasted a lot longer. Bucky could hear conversation happening in the background—between operator and supervisor, maybe?

"Apologies, could you repeat that?" the operator finally asked.

"The police have blocked off this street," Bucky said, and now he could see fear mingling with the confusion in Robin's eyes. They both knew what this meant: whoever those people in blue uniforms were out there, they weren't police. Not really. "They shot Robin—she's, uh, the woman."

More talking.

"Sir, is there a way for you to get out of the store safely?"

Alone? Yeah, he could make it out alone. But he would leave Robin to bleed out.

"Not with Robin."

He risked a glance out the store windows. This time, there were some officers creeping about outside. He didn't have long before they got brave enough to try their luck—especially since they didn't have the problems associated with being actual police.

"And not alone," Bucky added as he ducked back down.

"They're here, aren't they?" Robin asked. Her voice was getting quieter by the minute. Bucky gave her a terse nod. "God," she whispered, closing her eyes. Her grip on the bandages around her thigh weakened and Bucky quickly pressed down on the backs of her hands, reminding her that she would die all the faster if she wasn't careful.

"Mr. Holland, please stay with me," the operator said. "Do not hang up the phone. Help will be there soon."

The unmistakable sound of something being fired reached Bucky's ears, followed quickly by a canister breaking through the glass and hitting the floor.

"Not soon enough," he muttered before setting the phone by Robin's ear. He could hear the gas coming out. Probably tear gas, but it could have been something much worse. "Keep talking to them," he said, grabbing one of the shirts he hadn't used and tying it around his nose and mouth for all the good it would do. "Whatever you do, stay awake. Do _not_ fall asleep."

Robin watched him with wide eyes. "What are you going to do?"

Bucky rolled his shoulders and let his thoughts slide into the icy calm ocean always lurking in his brain. "Whatever I can."

"What are you—"

He vaulted the counter, landing hard on his feet. The canister was still spitting out gas, but it must have been defective because parts the release mechanism appeared dented and the gas was not coming out continuously. Bucky grabbed the canister and threw it back outside through the other window. The glass shattered and fell in sparkling unity to the floor, allowing more air to flow through the room. With any luck, Robin would avoid the worst of the effects. Bucky's eyes were watering, but he had kept the canister well away from his face.

The people outside had noticed him and were shouting and pointing and generally looking like assholes. Bucky faced them. He reached up, took off his hat, and smoothed his hair back. In ten quick seconds he had pulled his hair into a tight bun that fit nicely through the opening in the back of his baseball cap when he slid it back on.

He then lifted both his hands into the air, palms out, and strode through the door. He had to use his foot to push it open, not willing to risk a premature bullet over something so trivial.

There were no fewer than six weapons aimed at his chest while he walked out to the middle of the street. He was alone save for the people that weren't police and onlookers on opposite ends of the block trying to peer around the barricades. If he looked up, he'd guess that there were more people watching from their apartments.

He could hear the distant sound of a helicopter and, much closer, sirens.

"Don't move!" shouted one of the men when Bucky got to the middle of the street. Bucky stopped, eyeing the six men moving to surround him. As he stood still, they spread out around him, evenly distributing themselves. They all had rifles—another clue that these were not police.

If he wasn't busy examining his surroundings, he would have spared the time to reflect on his own stupidity. Of course HYDRA had still been searching for him. They had to have been planning this for a long time, and with the speed they'd set it up with, they must have had spies planted nearly everywhere, not to mention access to cameras and many other kinds of city resources. That incident at the base had probably just been the final straw.

Bucky designated the officers around him One through Six, with One at his twelve o'clock and the numbers going up clockwise so that Six was at his ten o'clock. Two—from his two o'clock—and Six advanced on him, their weapons raised while they moved forward. Their movements indicated training of some sort, as did the icy blankness on their faces.

Bucky watched with languid calm as the two advanced on him, his eyes skipping from them back to his surroundings. There wasn't much: a few cars parked on the street, a manhole cover at his eleven o'clock, and some trees planted on the sidewalk.

If they opened fire right now, there wouldn't be much Bucky could do.

But they weren't going to. They probably had orders to take him alive. Two shifted his weapon to the side, letting it hang on its strap so he could pull out some serious-looking handcuffs. There was something strange about one of the cuffs, and Bucky realized that it was designed to interfere with his left arm somehow.

Two yards away. One. Officer Two opened his mouth, probably to tell Bucky to put his hands behind his back.

A couple of plates on his metal arm clicked into place and time slowed to a crawl.

Bucky hit Two with a hard punch to the throat, collapsing his trachea. Adjusting his feet, he lashed out behind him with a kick that connected perfectly with Six's stomach. Six gasped and lurched. The rest of the soldiers already had their fingers tightening on their triggers, so Bucky didn't stop moving. As his back foot came back down, he reached out and grabbed Two's shirt before he could stagger out of reach. Bucky then stepped back and turned, making himself smaller as he went behind Six and shoved the man between him and Four.

As soon as Bucky had his free hand back, he took Two's gun and fired it from underneath the incapacitated officer's arm, taking down Three and Five before Four and One had time to process the new threat. Then they opened fire.

Bullets thudded into Two and Six, both of whom reacted to the first couple and then quickly went silent. A few punched right through Two's body, but Bucky's left arm deflected the bullets before they could do any damage. Bucky's right leg, still injured from his romp in the HYDRA base two days earlier, trembled under the strain. Bucky adjusted his grip on Two, who wasn't struggling at all anymore.

Four and One were the only two left, and Bucky had blocked their shots with Two and Six's bodies. The bigger problem was that some officers on either end of the block had noticed the sudden shootout and were approaching.

"Tell your friends to back off, or this situation is going to end exactly how you don't want it to."

Four and One exchanged a look. Then they began to circle Bucky, giving him his answer. Bucky followed them, adjusting Two and Six as needed to keep himself covered. As he did that, he inched to his left until his left foot was exactly where he wanted it to be.

With his perception of time as skewed as it was, Bucky was the first to notice the strange silver shape moving through the sky at alarming speeds. Understanding dawned on him a second later when Iron Man dropped from the sky several yards away, facing the largest of the groups.

Other Avengers joined the fray as the officers frantically tried to fight back and get away. Bucky had to drop himself farther into the cold to avoid looking for Steve. Right now, he had the same goal as those phony policemen: escaping.

Now was as good a chance as any. While everyone was distracted by the Avengers, Bucky dropped the bodies he'd been using as shields, lifted up the manhole cover, and jumped down.

As he fell, the manhole cover clanged back into place, plunging Bucky into near-complete darkness by the time he landed and rolled on the sewer walkway. His eyes adjusted to the dark, providing him with little more than shadows. A second later the smell hit and Bucky quickly filed that sensation away. His nose would shut down soon, fortunately, though there was little he could do about his watering eyes.

The soft sound of running water hit Bucky's ears, reminding Bucky that he wasn't here to stand still. Trusting his senses to map the way in front of him, Bucky took off down the tunnels, moving as silently as his speed would allow.

He was going to have to burn this outfit. Or wash it twice.

Bucky stopped at a corner. The path went straight or right. He listened for a moment; there was much more noise coming from the straight path. That was probably a dead end, so Bucky went right. He'd gone about four yards when a new noise joined the mix of sewer and muffled street: footsteps. Not his own.

"Bucky!"

Identified: adrenaline spike.

Identified: headache.

Identified: pulse spike.

Identified: _shit_.

Bucky increased his pace. Now the smell would work to his advantage; with Steve's serum, there would have been no way to hide otherwise, as much as Bucky didn't want to think of Steve as some kind of bloodhound.

He'd probably be a golden retriever, anyway.

 _Focus._

Kind of hard to do that when his childhood friend was yelling his name in a goddamned sewer after probably seeing Bucky kill two guys.

Bucky took another hard right and then a quick left, followed by a series of random turns and one jump across the canal that nearly ended with him getting his heel in the sludge. It didn't, though, and Bucky kept going. His heart rate had calmed and he'd gotten rational thought back, but it was a near thing. If Steve caught up—

 _"Hey, Steve, don't mind me, just running away from you in a sewer, bye!"_

Bucky shut that hysterical part of his mind away. He didn't need or want it right now.

"Bucky!"

"Shut up," Bucky growled. Every time Steve said his name, Bucky's thoughts scattered. It was ridiculous; it was a name. Just a name.

It wasn't, though, not really. It was an identity. _His_ identity that _he_ had reclaimed.

With Steve's help.

 _'Til the end of the line._

Which did not, in fact, include the sewer. Bucky found a ladder and started to scale it, making sure to let part of his pants tear on the poorly-welded and rusting metal. Then he dropped back down and started running again, taking another three turns before he found another ladder and went up there.

He emerged in an alley. After letting the manhole cover slide gently and quietly back into place, Bucky adjusted his hat and then started walking. He probably could have found his way straight to his base, but he was not going to risk Steve following him there.

On the way back to his base he stopped in a store. Ignoring the way the cashier's nose wrinkled, Bucky purchased a new outfit and then changed in the changing room, leaving his old clothes there. His new navy blue hat tucked over his head, he walked back onto the street, stuck his hands into his pockets, and tried to ignore the way his right hand was trembling.

* * *

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	10. Chapter 10

_Apologies for the delay. My Internet was down yesterday._

* * *

10

He managed to lay low for the next few days, only leaving his base for groceries and other essentials. He got a small radio just to listen, and when things got particularly exciting—as in, the Avengers were out saving the world or something—Bucky would inevitably find himself in a bar or café with his eyes discreetly glued to the television.

It wasn't intentional. He just couldn't stop himself. After his close call in the sewer his skin had felt a little too tight around his body and no amount of exercise, food, or meditation could make the feeling go away. It drove him out of the base—right to those televisions—because the radio wasn't enough to satisfy anymore. Steve was a magnet and Bucky couldn't get out of his range. His close call had just made it worse.

Now, four days after that disaster, Bucky found himself in a bar, nursing a glass of something he couldn't remember the name of. The bar was tucked away from the big streets and was showing its age, but it was clean and the people inside were lively without being overbearing. The background noise served to occupy the parts of Bucky's mind that tended to wander away.

He'd learned after the fact that the officers had been HYDRA and had impersonated the police for the sole purpose of getting Bucky alone. It wasn't clear whether they'd intentionally shot Robin or not, but at least they'd all been apprehended. The ones that Bucky hadn't killed or gotten shot, at least.

And he'd discovered—completely by chance as he took a totally casual anad unplanned stroll through a hospital—that Robin had survived her injuries and was on her way to recovery with her wife at her side.

The Avengers had saved the day again. Hooray.

"…Avengers appear to be having some difficulty with this opponent, Laila, what do you think?"

Bucky glanced up from his glass. The TV was tuned into a news talk show with three talking heads chatting about something happening on a screen behind them. He watched for three seconds before he understood the action. The Avengers—minus Hulk and Thor—were battling some kind of energy… _thing_ that appeared to be slightly smaller than a quinjet. There were a bunch of other guys running around too, probably the creators of that monstrosity. From the surroundings and the crawl running across the bottom of the screen, Bucky saw that the Avengers were duking it out in some city in central Wisconsin, though from the number of farms Bucky could see, "city" was a loose term.

"According to our experts," one of the news people was saying, "that creature is incredibly unstable and is likely going to—hold on, is that right?"

All three of them fell silent before the woman cleared her throat. "The creature will likely—will explode if it is not stabilized or dissipated in time."

The few other people sitting at the bar who were watching the TV went quiet. Someone said, "Wait, are they serious?"

"Hey, John, turn up the TV over here," someone called. The bartender waved acknowledgement and turned up the volume before walking over to watch.

"What's going on?"

"The end of the world," someone said dryly.

"Avengers are fightin' some weird thing out in Wisconsin," someone said. "Said it'll explode."

"The hell kinda creature does that?"

The camera flashed back to the creature and the bartender whistled. "That's certainly somethin'."

Black Widow and the archer were dealing with most of the minions, though the archer was occasionally shooting an arrow that would then explode into some kind of restrictive compound against the creature, slowing it down. Meanwhile, Iron Man and Steve were taking on the creature directly because—unsurprisingly—Steve was an idiot.

"Why isn't the military there?" someone asked.

"The hell would a tank do against something like that?"

Bucky took a drink. He set his glass down right as Steve got blasted by the thing and sent flying. The metal hand clenched into a fist, the leather glove around it complaining, and it was only by chance that Bucky hadn't used that limb to pick up his glass.

He tuned out the people at the bar. He tuned out the people on the television. All he saw was Steve pick himself up and get blasted again. He got his shield up this time but he was still knocked way back.

Inhale, pause, exhale.

It went on like that for another three minutes. Bucky's world started to pale at the edges and he was seized by the desire to move, to act, to do _something_ , dammit, but there was nothing and so he stayed in his chair and watched as Steven Grant Rogers took hit after hit so that Stark could buzz around the thing like some kind of metal fly.

The glass shattered beneath his right hand. Bucky glanced down, seeing a couple pieces embedded in his palm.

Inhale, pause, exhale.

He stood. The people were too busy staring at the TV to notice what had just happened, but it wouldn't be long before someone did. In two quick motions Bucky picked the glass out of his palm and left for the bathroom. Once there he cleaned his hand. The glass hadn't gone that deep so he settled for some paper towel and held it there until the wounds clotted. Then he stuck his hands in his pockets and left the bar, but not before leaving a hefty tip by his broken glass.

He didn't look at the TV.

His feet carried him around the city. His mind was whirling too quickly to pay attention and only after four minutes of standing in one place did Bucky realize that he'd stopped across the street from Avengers Tower.

He stared at the steel monstrosity forcing its way into the sky. Far above his head, the blue letters declared themselves to anyone stuck looking their way.

He hated this building. Hated its architecture. Hated the time Steve spent in it. Hated what it meant—that Steve was out there, still doing his duty, still putting himself in the line of fire _and he wasn't supposed to be there I just want him to be safe God ple—_

There was a bench nearby and Bucky sat in it and focused on his breathing. He'd been doing a lot of that lately, breathing. Lungs expanding and contracting, chest rising and falling. His whole respiratory system working in tandem with the rest of his body to keep him alive.

Was it really worth it?

Bucky bit his lip and pulled his baseball cap lower over his eyes. Despite the sun and his heavier clothes, he felt cold.

Steve was out there getting his ass kicked and Bucky was—

He was what? Sitting on a bench, pitying himself?

Yeah, Steve was a super soldier and whatever. So was Bucky, technically, and Steve had always been the one with problems. Bucky had no right to sit here while Steve was out there being Captain-goddamned-America.

But he couldn't make himself get up. He sat there and stared at the Tower and hated himself. He didn't have the courage to look Steve in the eye in a sewer, much less wait for him in Avengers Tower. There was no point to him being here. No point in waiting and watching as though he'd be able to see if Steve came back all right from the ground.

It wasn't as though they'd make it public if Steve was hurt. He was too much of an icon.

Steve. A national treasure.

Bucky wanted to laugh. It wasn't a good kind of laughter, though, so he shoved it back down.

A group of tourists walked by. Their guide was talking.

"…nd here we have the wonderful Avengers Tower, built by Tony Stark. It was originally named the Stark Tower, but after the formation of the Avengers in 2012, it was renamed and now houses our heroes whenever they happen to be in the city."

There was a clamor of questions, but one was louder and more often repeated than the rest.

"Are there any there now?"

The tour guide—a young man, probably no older than twenty-five—smiled a smile that probably appeared patient to most, but just looked hassled to Bucky. "Well, there's no way to know for sure. In all likelihood they are."

More questions. The group moved on.

Of course the Avengers weren't in the Tower right now. They were out of the city, out of the state, trying to stop a disaster from happening by getting their asses kicked.

The desire to know what the situation was had Bucky's right foot tapping a restless rhythm. Was Steve hurt? He'd seen him get hit twice but Steve had always been able to take a punch (usually by protecting the rest of his body with his face). He was probably fine. He was Steve. Steve wouldn't quit—hell, he'd survived the alien invasion and years of his own dumbassery after that all alone.

By himself. Because Bucky wasn't there.

Back then he was still the Soldier. Back then his thoughts were about the mission and his handlers. Back then his world consisted of targets and the grip of a gun. Back then he wasn't himself.

Was he now? That was the question, wasn't it? Steve seemed to think so, at least on some level. Bucky wasn't as sure.

He knew who he was. James Buchanan Barnes, born March 10, 1917, eldest child of four. Sergeant of the 107th infantry regiment and a Howling Commando. Steve's best friend. He had a hundred other facts like that, but just because he knew them didn't make them real. Didn't make them fit together. The guy who followed Steve Rogers into the jaws of death and the guy who clawed his way back weren't the same. Something had been lost in that exchange—something had been taken, and Bucky wasn't sure he could get it back. He wasn't even sure where to look.

He was a shattered mirror of himself, and the cracks became more obvious the longer he stopped to examine them.

Enough. He could no more sit here in ignorance than he could travel to Wisconsin and see for himself. Bucky stood, adjusted his jacket, and strode down the sidewalk. It took mere minutes to find a suitable café with a suitable television tuned to a suitable channel. Bucky sat at one of the small raised tables in the back and sipped the simple hot chocolate he ordered. He had considered coffee, but caffeine now would be a bad idea with his already agitated state of mind.

The news was now almost exclusively camera footage. No more people sitting at ridiculous desks commenting on things that did not merit comment. Good. Bucky did not want to spare the effort of ignoring them. The camera was showing a massive field of devastation. There was smoke still coming up from the center of the crater that had to be a hundred yards in diameter. Stranger still, the camera was very far away; the footage was obviously from zooming in if the shaking and odd angle were any indication.

After another ten or so seconds, the camera zoomed out. Emergency vehicles dotted the landscape, but what drew Bucky's attention was the quinjet still settled among them. He spent a second reading the banner beneath the image and saw the caption describing the aversion of a crisis.

So the Avengers had saved the day after all.

But to hell with the Avengers. Where was Steve?

The camera didn't oblige Bucky's twitching curiosity and instead panned over the destruction again. Bucky didn't give two shits about the barns that had been rent asunder or the cattle that had been immolated. He wanted _Steve_.

Finally the cameraman heeded Bucky's psychic threats of imminent dismemberment and panned the camera back over to the quinjet, where two figures were carrying another inside. Like a vulture sensing food, the camera honed in on the image, giving Bucky a nice, clear shot of the archer and Black Widow dragging a battered and bloody Steve into the quinjet.

For a moment, all Bucky saw was red. He wasn't sure what he thought in that span of seconds, but he knew it was ugly.

Then he noticed something about the way Steve's arm was slung over Black Widow's shoulder. He had his hand raised, the fingers splayed out with his pinkie over his ring finger and his index bent next to his middle.

The fire in Bucky's veins flickered and retreated. He knew that sign, and it calmed him before he even fully processed it. A minute's worth of scouring his brain rewarded him memories of alley fights and, later, difficult battles that always ended with him or Steve being hurt, and then that sign— _I'm not okay, but I'll get there._

For the next few seconds, Bucky wondered whether the floor would open up beneath him. He certainly felt lightheaded enough to be falling.

Bucky decided—once he got his wits back—that his first greeting to Steve would not be made through words. It would be made with a solid right hook to Steve's proud American jaw as payment for all the crap he was putting Bucky through.

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	11. Chapter 11

11

The true implications of Steve's signal didn't hit Bucky until the next day, when the giddiness of relief had largely receded to a warm glow hovering somewhere in his chest.

Steve had deliberately made that signal. It was a signal only he and Bucky knew; the Howling Commandos may have picked up on it, but it had always been understood that the gesture was for Bucky and Steve alone. So for Steve to use it after a tough mission—and he had to have known about the cameras, since at this point it was damn near impossible to go somewhere without them following—he had to have known that Bucky was watching, or at least hoped.

And with Bucky's luck, Steve really did believe that Bucky was watching. That he cared. That the good man HYDRA had taken was still buried somewhere in Bucky's hardened, blackened heart.

That was dramatic but not entirely untrue. Steve had always been the one to see the best in people, not Bucky. That wasn't to say that Steve was unrealistic. He always did what the situation demanded—so long as he couldn't find a better solution.

He was losing focus. Steve knew about Bucky. He knew that Bucky was in the city, if not because of the HYDRA base that the news had gotten hold of some days back, then because of the sewer incident. And Steve suspected that Bucky was watching him.

It was only a matter of time before Steve found him. Bucky had probably only had this long because Steve had been busy with missions. Bucky had a week at most before Steve recovered from his new injuries and started looking again with twice the energy and focus he had originally, especially now that he knew where to look.

If Bucky was smart, he would leave now and not look back. If Bucky was smart, he would go to ground outside the city and wait for the storm to pass. If Bucky was smart, he would leave this entire country and try to lay low elsewhere, away from prying eyes and star-spangled uniforms. If he was smart—

But he wasn't. Bucky finished his hot chocolate in one long drink, feeling the hot liquid burn its way down his throat. There was no way for him to think objectively about this. In his time Before, as the Soldier, icy dispassion had been his default, but that calm would serve him no purpose here. Steve had been the one to burn it away in the first place, and trying it now after all that had happened would be akin to trying to maintain an ice cube on the surface of the sun.

He slammed the cup back to the table altogether harder than he had intended, earning a few curious glances that quickly turned away when he proved to be uninteresting.

He didn't need his own brain to keep kicking itself into the same cycles. He needed a second opinion.

* * *

Sammy's gym looked exactly as it had the last time Bucky had been there. That was reasonable, since it had been less than a week since Bucky's last trip. Bucky had showered in an apartment with crummy locks on its windows in the meantime, which had worked fine until the owner returned from whatever journey he had been on.

"Hey, I was wondering when your face'd grace my halls again!" Sammy called good-naturedly from behind his desk when Bucky entered. Bucky mustered a tired smile; in the time he had spent here, he had only grown to like Sammy more. The man had a cheerful candor about him that was rare in most and a lopsided smile that eased any offense he caused. He was astute enough to run his gym and carry on a conversation with Bucky whenever Bucky stopped to talk, which he had done a few times on his way out.

Therefore, when Bucky said, "Can I talk with you about something?" Sammy's response was not confusion. He was surprised, certainly, but only in the way that a bird flying into a nearby window would startle someone. Unexpected and fairly uncommon, but not impossible. And for all that, Sammy's expression soon smoothed out into easy concern. Bucky had no doubt that Sammy believed he was some kind of veteran, an idea that Bucky had done nothing to discourage.

"Sure. Place is empty right now." Sammy left his space behind the desk and pulled up one of the plastic chairs in the battered lobby so that he could sit and face Bucky, who had also found a seat in one of the chairs. "So what can I do you for?"

Bucky was quiet for a minute, trying to figure out what to say. He had come to Sammy for the sole reason that he was the only person with whom Bucky had maintained consistent contact and communication. The man knew more about Bucky through sheer observation than nearly every person on Earth.

"I…have to make a decision," Bucky said slowly, leaning forward and draping his elbows across his knees. After a few seconds he wove his gloved fingers together simply for the sake of having something visually interesting to focus on. "Neither choice is…easy."

He glanced up. Sammy was frowning at him—not in anger, though.

"You're not givin' me a lot to go on, son."

Bucky blew out a breath. "Right. He's…well. There's this man that has been chasing—" Sammy's brows drew low over his eyes but Bucky quickly made a cutting gesture with one hand—"sorry, it's more like I've been running. He's a good sort. We were friends for a while." Bucky's tone softened and quieted, though he wasn't totally aware of it. "A long time ago, anyway."

"And now?" Sammy prodded gently.

"It's complicated. I did some things." Bucky steepled his fingers and then let them fold again. "A lot of things. Some of them worse than others. He…found out that I was around. He wants to help."

Bucky glanced up. Sammy still looked skeptical. "He really does," Bucky repeated. "You know, the sort that would stab himself to keep someone else from bleeding."

Sammy gave a grudging nod. Bucky took a half-minute to piece together the rest of his thoughts.

"Trouble is," he eventually said, "I can't look him in the eye." That was a gross understatement. "Everything I know wants me to run 'n not look back. I've got my reasons for it, but—" Bucky searched for the right words and failed. After a handful of frustrating seconds, he sighed. "But they don't hold weight when I think about it."

Sammy waited to make sure that Bucky was done before he spoke. "And you've done a lotta thinking?"

Bucky nodded. He felt strange, sitting here and talking with a man with more salt in his hair than pepper and an accent thick enough to cut, but he didn't feel out of place.

"Well," Sammy said after a beat, "I can't speak about the character o' yer friend from more'n what you've said, but." He hesitated, clearly picking his words with care. "He seems a nice sort. And the stuff in yer head might be a reaction t' that. Nothin' personal against him, 'course, just…there."

Bucky chewed his lip. "You're saying it's all in my head."

Sammy was shaking his head almost before Bucky finished speaking. "Lotta people say that about a lotta things, son, and it's all crap. You know what's in yer head? Everything. So people that tell ya that the stuff in there ain't important clearly got a lotta empty space between their ears, ya hear?"

Bucky nodded, somewhat taken aback by the vehemence in Sammy's tone. It was the kind of bitterness that came from experience.

"Now, yer friend," Sammy continued, "seems t' mean well. But if it's been a while, he doesn't know ya like he did." Sammy waved a hand while he found the right thing to say. "He's gotta adjust, or he'll need to, anyhow." Sammy's tone softened. "It ain't an easy thing, coming back. For anyone."

Bucky thought of fire and metal and blood. He nodded.

"You said yer other option was t' run, right?" Another nod. "You don't strike me as a runner. Not t' say ya aren't in shape, 'course."

Bucky managed a thin-lipped smile. "Your gym has nice machines."

"No need to flatter the things. They're all halfway to broke. What I'm tryin' t' say is that yer a survivor." Bucky tilted his head ever so slightly, his attention now on Sammy's face instead of his own hands. "Ya wear it in yer eyes," Sammy explained with a vague gesture. "Dunno how to explain it. But ya don't strike me the type t' turn yer back on anythin'." He paused and smiled, a genuine expression that reduced the tension in the room that Bucky had been trying very hard to ignore. "Feel free t' correct me if I'm wrong."

Bucky returned a shadow of his expression. "No, I think you've got it."

And he did, if Bucky stopped to think. Even before he'd met Steve, he hadn't backed down from a fight just because he might get bloodied in the process. After he met Steve, the same idea applied—there was just a feisty blond in the mix to start the fights Bucky didn't notice enough to pick. During the war, he'd done everything he could. Taking the extra watch, setting himself and his rifle up on precarious cliffs and in swaying trees to get the best shot for covering his friends' backs, going in right behind Steve, always on his right side, always facing forward.

There was no turning back. There never had been, because there was nothing to turn back to. Bucky's eyes had always been set forward, above the next challenge, around the next obstacle, always searching for the greener grass on the other side. And when there was no grass, he made do with whatever he got.

Through it all, he persisted.

"It ain't a bad thing," Sammy said, pulling Bucky from his thoughts. "Bein' a survivor, that is. Gets ya a helluva lot in the short run." Sammy shook his head a little. "But it ain't gonna do ya any favors with stuff like this. That feelin' that ya gotta run? That's yer brain gettin' crossed."

Bucky tried not to show his confusion in response to that, but Sammy picked up on it anyway.

"Yer brain is trained for threats," he said. "And sometimes it doesn't discriminate all that well." He smiled again, but this time it was bittersweet. "Happened to me. Happens t' friends a' mine. When there aren't threats, yer brain's gotta make somethin', give ya somethin' t' motivate ya. Ya hear?"

Bucky nodded slowly. "You're saying…you're saying I'm projecting. Seeing something that isn't really there."

"I'm sayin' you _might_ be," Sammy clarified gently. "As I said, I don't have a lot t' go on. But from what you've said, it might be worth yer while t' give this fellow a chance. And if the situation goes sour, well, ya can listen to that feeling in yer brain and pull a tactical retreat."

Sammy's smile turned wry with the last phrase—Bucky suspected it was an inside joke in a group he was not a part of.

Bucky slowly got to his feet. Sammy did the same. Bucky held out his hand, and Sammy shook it.

"Thank you," Bucky said as genuinely as he could.

"You're welcome, James," Sammy said. Bucky hesitated, but only for a second.

"My friends call me Bucky."

Sammy's smile grew wide and bright. "Well, Bucky, it's a pleasure. Are ya gonna stay?"

Bucky shook his head. His thoughts were tumbling too much—

But wasn't this exactly the kind of place to deal with that? His clothes weren't great for working out, but they'd do as long as Bucky kept things light. He could drop back to the base and do laundry, get some other things sorted out once he calmed his mind.

So Bucky changed his headshake into a nod. "Actually, I think I will. For a little while."

"Enjoy yerself." Sammy's tone grew more serious, matching the change in his expression. "And if ya ever need anythin', you're always welcome in here."

Bucky let the gravity and generosity in those words wash over him before he nodded. "Thank you," he said again, meaning it just as much as before.

Sammy waved him in the direction of the gym with greatly exaggerated motions. Bucky took the hint, and his lips were still curled into a grin when he settled down to stretch.

The conversation hadn't cleared up everything, but it had helped. There was little Bucky could do about his urge to run, but he could burn some of it out on the weights.

He turned over the advice Sammy had given while he stretched. Bucky didn't doubt that his brain was…crossed. It wasn't hard to figure out. But the idea that he would be projecting negative things onto Steve—that was a much harder pill to swallow.

 _Steve_. Of all the people—

But that was it, wasn't it? He spent so long thinking about Steve and imagining their first meeting and all that crap that his mind had to find something to darken the edges. Not enough to hate Steve or to fear him, but enough to get Bucky to run away in a sewer for no goddamned reason at all.

Bucky switched legs and leaned forward again.

He'd had his reasons at the time, but looking back they didn't seem as important as they had originally. It boiled down to what Sammy had described: he was afraid. Afraid of himself, afraid of Steve, afraid of what would happen when their meeting finally happened. His brain was ticking away and Bucky wasn't sure what would happen when it finally hit zero, if it ever would, and in the meantime he was stuck in limbo. He wanted to run and stay put at the same time, and it was about damn time he figured out which option was best.

If he ran, he'd never be able to stop. The world out there wasn't the same one he knew, and the two lives he'd lived—Bucky Barnes and the Winter Soldier—would elicit very different reactions the world over. He wouldn't be able to be one or the other—not that he wanted to go back to the Soldier, though sometimes he thought it was simpler like that—

God, he hated those thoughts, but he couldn't get rid of them. They were a crutch, a cane, and Bucky's brain used them to limp along whether he wanted it to or not.

But if he ran, he would be forced to give up parts of himself. Bucky Barnes couldn't go waltzing around, hell, _Romania_. He was bound to be recognized. Maybe it would be small things, like his name, a few mannerisms he'd picked up along the way. And he could build other things. A life outside of an old parking structure, for one. Maybe he wouldn't be the complete and unabridged version of Bucky Barnes, but he'd be someone. He'd be close.

He'd also be in HYDRA's crosshairs. They would target him either way, of course. Didn't matter to them whether they got their Asset back or they shut it down for good—though Bucky knew that most of the sick bastards would enjoy twisting him back into their perfect little Fist.

He shuddered and switched stretches.

He would be more of a target if he left New York. Here, the Avengers were a strong presence, keeping many of the larger HYDRA operations away simply by existing. In a weird way, it was safer than striking out on his own. That incident with the not-police was a prime example. He couldn't count on that kind of response every time—if Steve wasn't there, if Steve didn't realize it was him, whatever—but it was…comforting, in a way, to know that Steve cared enough to watch for him.

On that note, if he stayed, Steve would find him. Hell, Steve might find him even if he ran, but the chances were lower. In New York City, though, the odds were nearly certain. It wasn't a matter of years or months, probably not even weeks. He didn't have long.

So Bucky switched stretches again and considered what would happen if—when—Steve found him. There would be the first awkward conversation. Bucky guessed that he would panic and freeze without something else to prompt him into action. Steve would probably try to check where Bucky's head was without making it obvious that he was trying to check where Bucky's head was. Maybe then they'd get into some conversation deemed mutually "safe." Modern food. The weather.

Bucky grinned at the idea. Separated for seventy-odd years and their first instinct is to talk about the weather. But that did make sense; small talk was common for a reason. It was easy, reliable, and neutral. Commenting on the number of clouds in the sky wasn't going to offend anyone. Commenting on seventy years of brainwashing might.

After that…well, after that Bucky wasn't sure, and that was what really scared him. Steve he could understand—or at least he was pretty sure he could. Clearly there was a difference between the Steve in his jumbled memories and the Steve now, but Bucky was sure that the punk from Brooklyn was in there somewhere.

(Did Steve think the same about him?)

He would talk to Steve, make him understand that Bucky didn't mean any trouble. Sure, the bodies he'd stacked up over the last couple of weeks were bad, but they were outliers. He was trying to do good. Better, at least.

He was trying.

Steve would understand that, right?

And that was what kept him away. The parts he couldn't predict, the pieces he didn't know. What if Steve thought he was dangerous? What if Steve locked him up? What if Steve turned him in—

Even though Bucky tried to believe the thoughts were ridiculous and that the Steve he knew would never do any of those things, there was a part of him that kept whispering that he just didn't know for sure.

His last words to Steve had been " _You're my mission_ ," after all.

He finished stretching. Since he had the place to himself, he eschewed the weights and went to one of the bags. There was simple tape in a basket screwed into the wall, and Bucky quickly wrapped his right hand. He set himself at an angle that would allow him to see if anyone walked in so that he would be able to switch to single-handed strikes immediately if necessary.

Then he went to work.

Right hook. Left jab. Right feint left straight right low shot left knee hard. The bag swayed back and Bucky hit it again and again, each impact reverberating up his right arm and making vibrations that he could feel in his left side where the arm was fused to his body.

 _Steve won't believe you._

Three right jabs left hook.

 _Steve won't trust you._

Right jab left cross left hook right cross.

 _Steve won't listen to you._

Left jab left hook right cross.

 _Steve._

Right jab.

 _Won't._

Left hook.

 _Want._

Right cross.

 _To._

Left uppercut.

 _Be._

Right uppercut.

 _Around._

Left hook right jab left jab spinning—

 _You._

—kick. The bag swung wildly, the chains holding it in place creaking as it moved. Bucky let his hands fall to his sides for just a second.

"You brainwashed, traitorous assassin," Bucky finished for his brain when he reached out and steadied the bag. He had sweat dripping into his eyes and at some point he had bitten his lip hard enough to draw blood.

He glanced up. Despite his momentary loss of awareness, no one had come into the gym.

Good.

Identified: weariness.

Identified:

Identified:

"I don't know, dammit," Bucky muttered to no one in particular as he unwound the tape from his knuckles. It was ripped in most places and worn everywhere else from the force Bucky had been putting behind his blows. "If I knew what the hell I was feeling I wouldn't be here."

He was lying, but that didn't matter. The apprehension coiling in his stomach wouldn't go away even if he slapped a label on it with neon lights.

Bucky did a relatively quick cool-down. The…whatever that had been had served to slow his thoughts, though Bucky wasn't sure whether the weariness in his mind and body was good or not.

He did shower, though it seemed kind of moot given that he had to put his sweaty clothes back on anyway. Sammy nodded at him on the way out, and Bucky nodded back.

He had a lot to think about.

* * *

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	12. Chapter 12

12

Seven days. Seven days of nothing. No HYDRA, no Steve, not even a serious traffic accident. By the third day Bucky was pacing. By the fifth he was twitching. By the seventh he was ready to punch the next person that so much as bumped into him. He had already worked out, taken a walk, and done laundry. His only excuse for getting out now was buying groceries, which, as it happened, was a necessary chore after the breakfast he'd had that morning.

Except he didn't go to the nearest store. He told himself that it was because he wanted to avoid going to the same place too many times on the same schedule. So he kept walking and ended up at a store in Brooklyn.

The man behind the counter watched Bucky for the first couple of minutes and then dismissed him, which was fine by Bucky. For his part, Bucky perused the shelves, for all appearances the concerned shopper. In reality, he was trying to figure out why the hell his feet had carried him all the way out here.

He was examining a lettuce leaf for the meaning of life when it finally hit him.

This was where he'd first met Steve. Well, not _here_ , in this store, but in one of the alleys on this block. That had been…when, 1932? No, earlier than that. 1930. That made it roughly 85 years since he'd first met the punk.

Bucky rocked back on his heels, his eyes losing focus. Had it really been that long? They should've been old men by now. Either that or dead.

There were memories here. Bucky could feel them hovering just outside his awareness, but they didn't feel unpleasant. They went deeper than the torture and pain, all the way back to days working on the docks and coming home to find Steve either bruised, sketching, or asleep, depending on the hour. Bucky closed his eyes and saw the apartment they'd shared after Steve's mom had passed away in '36, sagging couch, rusted fire escape, and threadbare rug and all. If he focused on the image he could see Steve perched on a chair, using the last sunlight falling through the window to draw. The angle was strange—Bucky was on the couch, then, one hand draped over the side to rest on the rug, watching Steve's back.

Always watching.

Bucky opened his eyes and was almost surprised to find himself back in the grocery store. His right hand itched with the feeling of rough fabric beneath it.

Even more restless than before, Bucky bought his groceries and left. If he stayed in this place much longer, he was never going to be able to leave. Either that, or he'd end up doing something stupid.

He had his paper bag nestled in the crook of his left arm, not trusting the handles haphazardly attached to the top. With every step he could hear the food inside resettling and feeling the vibrations with the sensors in the metal arm. His mind drifted back to the first couple of months after Insight, when he had felt the need to eat but hadn't been able to keep anything down. Back then, this bag of groceries would've made him sick to his stomach, but now—now it was _his_ , and he was going to eat all of it.

His mind focused on food, Bucky didn't react fast enough to avoid hitting someone when he turned the next corner. Reflexes taking over, Bucky was talking before he even saw who the asshole was.

"Hey, watch where you're go—"

Bucky's eyes finally found the stranger's face. He took in a tall, muscular body, blond hair tousled by the wind, and blue eyes going wide with shock even as the man fumbled out an apology, and felt the sidewalk slip out from underneath him—or maybe he was the one slipping.

He'd know that face anywhere.

 _Steve_.

"—punk."

* * *

Somehow, they managed to avoid accidentally killing each other even after Bucky had insisted on putting his groceries back at the base—and Bucky let slide the fact that Steve had obviously been inside the base while Bucky was out. Once he was sure he was calm enough to think, Bucky guided Steve to a nearby café that he'd frequented for a while until the baristas had begun to know him by name. Part of his reasoning was that he was hoping the more public space would help them talk. The other part was that he really didn't like the way Steve had been looking around the base. It wasn't that Steve had been angry or condescending; he'd just looked…sad. No, that wasn't quite right.

Nothing was quite right.

Bucky ordered them both hot chocolate, because by now he'd figured out that no matter the situation, hot chocolate made things just a little bit better. He pointedly ignored Steve's raised eyebrow when the barista referred to Bucky as "William."

They sat at a table in a corner by the windows. Bucky took the seat with its back to the wall, and Steve sat opposite him. Steve was gripping his hot chocolate tightly enough that Bucky could see the paper cup beginning to fold, something that Steve only noticed when the hot liquid inside dribbled out of the top, down the side, and onto his hand. Bucky passed him a napkin.

"Thanks," Steve said automatically.

Bucky rested his hands around his hot chocolate, the sensors in his left hand picking up on the heat even through the glove. So far, Steve had kept his questions to himself, but it was plain to see that he was nervous. Bucky could understand; he was going through the same thing, and he hated it. This was _Steve_ , and even though Bucky had all of these memories in his head and the concrete knowledge that he _knew_ Steve, he couldn't bring himself to open his mouth and speak to the man currently dabbing hot chocolate off his hands.

It seemed that Steve was having the same issue, given that he had now spent thirty seconds doing something that should have taken fewer than ten. Bucky cleared his throat and Steve glanced up.

Now or never.

"I figure…my first greeting wasn't good." He looked Steve in the eye. "Can I do it over?"

Steve blinked for a few seconds, plainly shocked. Then he was nodding. "Yeah, of course. For sure. De—" He stopped babbling, looking embarrassed, and took a breath before saying, "Yes."

The simple fact that neither of them knew what the hell they were doing was oddly comforting.

Bucky took a second to steel himself. He looked down at his hands and the softly steaming cup between them. Inhale, pause, exhale. Then he glanced up and mustered a small smile, pulling it from the same place as the afternoons on the couch and the back-alley fights and the moving pictures and the feeling of home.

"Hello, Steve."

Steve looked as though he'd just been shot. For a split second, Bucky worried that he'd done something wrong, but then Steve's eyes were watering and he was smiling back and Bucky realized that he must have done something really, really right.

"Hi, Buck."

* * *

 _This story was a joy to write, and I am glad you were here to enjoy it with me.  
_

 _Until next time,_

 _-RoR_

 _ **Please review.  
**_


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